Recently, some people ask for my opinion about Orcad PCB Designer Professional as an Altium Designer alternative.
I have to admit, I have never tried the new Orcad PCB Designer software, but I spoke to a Cadence guy in February at Embedded world exhibition about it. I was initially impressed with the 3000 EUR (or it was something similar) for the Orcad. The Orcad Professional price was comparable with Altium Designer.
But …
… when we went into more details, the Orcad PCB Designer Professional started looking to me more like a trap. Don’t forget, once you start using it, it’s very difficult to move to a different software. And if your company grows and you do more and more complex boards, you may very easily find the limits of Orcad Professional. That day, when I was leaving the Cadence stand, the conclusion was: I would need to pay at least 25000 EUR for the configuration which can be used for professional HW design + around 20% fees every year.
You can easily compare Orcad PCB Designer Standard / Professional and Allegro Designer by yourself in this document (or see the original here). As you can see, Orcad Standard doesn’t even include Differential pair routing (essential for any board), and Orcad Professional doesn’t have Propagation delay rules (essential for memory layout).
So, if you want to use the Orcad PCB Designer for all your future designs and you are sure you are not going to design any boards with differential pairs or memories – go for it. If you are planning to do layout professionally and you are planning to grow and design more and more complex boards, be sure you have considered all the option and made the right decision.
Note: This is not an advert for Altium. Even I use Altium a lot, it’s because it’s still a good software for a good price. Of course, this may change soon – if it does, be sure I will write and article about it. To make it even – for example I don’t like all the new Online Altium stuff. I am very suspicious, that the company wants us to become depended on their online services and later pay high subscriptions for using them (this is my personal opinion – and hopefully I am wrong 
. Once you become depended, they can do with the price anything – it will be very hard and costly to move to a different software / system / solution. That’s the reason why I don’t use Vaults and any other Altium online service.