Orcad vs. Open Source

I am trying to finish up a board layout and I have been making changes
to facilitate the routing of traces without so much crisscross. I am
using FreePCB to do the layout and it is going very well. FreePCB has
some issues and periodically pops up an error message, I click Ignore
and save my work (on top of saving it every time I make a change). So
far I have not lost one bit of work with the errors in FreePCB. So
the frequent saves may be overkill.

Orcad, on the other hand, doesn't fail often. When it does fail, it
usually offers to let you save your work. When you restart it, it
knows it was shut down rather than having exited and will open the
project you were working on. So again, I have lost little or no
work.

But now Orcad is dropping a net from the net list. This is a net that
had been listed just fine. I moved the pin it uses on the FPGA and
now it is gone from the net list. I have checked and double checked
the three connections to parts on this net and they all seem to be
fine. Even so, if only one of the three pin connections were good,
there would be errors. If two were good, it would still be in the net
list, just with the third point missing.

The Orcad file format is closed and I can't do anything to try to fix
this problem. The FreePCB file format, in contrast, is open and very
readable. I can view it to see what is going on although I only did
that when I started using the tool and didn't understand some things
about it.

I thought about using an open source schematic editor when I started
this project, but I didn't want to take the hit on the learning curve
and I did not have a lot of confidence in a new tool (to me) not
screwing up. Looks like I got that anyway.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Orcad vs. Open Source
    ... using FreePCB to do the layout and it is going very well. ... But now Orcad is dropping a net from the net list. ... Even so, if only one of the three pin connections were good, ... The Orcad file format is closed and I can't do anything to try to fix ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)
  • Re: Orcad vs. Open Source
    ... using FreePCB to do the layout and it is going very well. ... But now Orcad is dropping a net from the net list. ... Even so, if only one of the three pin connections were good, ... The Orcad file format is closed and I can't do anything to try to fix ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)