[Paul Crawford]

Eeyore wrote:
Beats me, other than no-one can decide what 'useful' really is. I usually
end up designing most of my library parts too. Used Orcad for ages btw.
Liked Pads when I came across it. The pcb tools seemed more intuitive than
many I've seen. How ANYONE can use Protel is beyond me.


I used the old DOS 16-bit Orcad initially and liked it. It was fast (on
a 12MHz 286!) and intuitive, with easy key-strokes for common tasks. You
got the impression it was written by folk who actually used it.

Then we got the 32-bit version of "DOS" Orcad (actually used a
DOS-extender I think). It was OK, handled bigger designs, but had a
number of irritating changes that made it seem less than good (mostly to
the PCB side of things).

When looking for a replacement to do stuff using 8-layer boards and
456-pin BGA packages I initially looked at the windows version of Orcar
(version 9 I think) and it was awful. All of the good aspects the DOS
original had were lost, and some things were just so stupid I could not
believe them. For example, editing a part with 'hidden' pins (e.g.
power/ground) in the DOS version showed them in blue so you could see
them to edit. In the windoze version they stayed hidden! You had to
guess/edit a location to see what the pin was, and if you made a mistake
there was no 'undo' option. DOH! Adding in the cost that was, after
allowing for inflation, 250% higher than the DOS package, it was
obviously not a good buy.

Having tried/demod the PADS package I was impressed, it was easy to
create things like the 456-pin BGA in about 4 commands (compared to
Orcad needing 456 manual pin placements) and it supported key-stroks for
common things, so I decided on that.

No idea how the various packages compare now, I don't use it so much
that it is worth paying for support/upgrades any more.

Sadly, the whole move to SMT just resulted in an explosion of PCB decals
being needed, and often for no good reason. For example, the 16-pin SO
resistor package from Bournes being just a *little* bit bigger than
everyone elses' 16-SO ICs. WTF?