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Date: 11/06/01 at 5:12 PM
Posted by: Carl Schattke
E-mail: PCBDSR@MSN.COM

In Reply to: Cadence Allegro vs PowerPCB posted by rich on 10/30/01 at 3:49 PM:

I am in the same boat. I was using PADS and Protel and now I going to be using the whole Cadence suite. The tools cost an arm and a leg and I am not convinced after 4 (count em)weeks of training that the tools will shorten any design cycle. They will however give us a better control of the SI issues and constraints.
Cadence tools ARE conveluted and cryptic to understand, however they are more powerful.
PowerPCB was a hassle to learn, but great once you did learn it. The PADS GUI is FAR better than the Cadence GUI. The hotkeys are much better. In Cadence you will have to write scripts and record macros to do much of what's automatic in PADS.
I would make the decision depending on the types of designs you are doing. Do you have intensive SI issues on each board? go cadence
Do you have alot of parts to build on each new design? Go PADS
Do you do alot of power and ground fills? Go PADS
Do you want an extreme amount of layers? Go Cadence
Do you want easy ECO's? Skip em both Go Protel
Actually Cadence beats PADS here.
Do you want clear file structure? Go PADS
Do you want mutiple display colors? Go Cadence
Do you want less crashes and GotCha's? Go PADS
Do you want to use free parts all ready built by someone else and tested? Go PADS
(www.pcbstandards.com) This could be a deciding factor for many folks.
Do you want easy Schematic part entry from a 2 million part XML database? Go Cadence
Do you want friendly? Go PADS
Do you want intuitive? Go PADS
Do you want an UNDO key? Go PADS
Do you want more than 1 Autosave? Go PADS
Do you want easy Specctra integration? Go Cadence
Do you want to make more money? Go Cadence
(because it's a real pain to learn and some won't want to thus driving the market price up for Cadence designers)
If it was my decision - unless there is a compelling reason to move to Cadence for the SI functionality I would stick with PADS.
That said, most newer designs are needing deeper and deeper control over everything.
Matched lengths, diff pairs, Xtalk, matched impedence, layer stackup control.
Cadence has built around this to the detriment of some basic functionality like UNDO, easy command implimentation, simple format.
Cadence is an OLD system with old system drawbacks. PADS PowerPCB GUI is only a few years old. On the roadmap moving forward I would say you can expect these packages to be more closely matched feature to feature in the future since PADS is now Innoveda (viewlogic)
Good luck!

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  Re: Cadence Allegro vs PowerPCB Adeline   Posted at: 03/20/02 (0)

  Re: Cadence Allegro vs PowerPCB aoao   Posted at: 01/07/02 (0)

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