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Lost my design files from Capture. Why does this keep happening?!

Nolebrain

Hi, my OrCAD capture version 17.4 routinely crashes during operation. I have observed this happening, 20-30 times at least during each project. While being committed to not learning another CAD too, I am on my last nerve and desperately need some assistance. 

To describe the problem I typically encounter, the software behaves normally until right click > view footprint. When this occurs it disables the copy and paste features and severally slows down capture. If I close the footprint preview box the software operates normally. Overtime the software appears to get slower and slower, in this particular case annotating the schematic resulted in a complete lock up of the software where nothing was able to be saved or clicked. 

After waiting several minutes of Capture being frozen I manually forced the program to close and re-opened it. The prompt alerted me that the program recovered the file which was closed unexpectedly. When the .DSN file opens it was a version from the last time I manually saved it, which was several hours ago.

Is there any way to recover my program? It appears that I have to constantly manually click save every few operations in fear that the program will crash. It also asked me if I would like to save my work which was not previously saved, I clicked yes/ok because I thought it was recovering my file from a few minutes ago, not one hours ago. I am afraid now it has overwritten my work.

I have talked to Cadence support and never have been able to resolve this issue. I certainly have never used a CAD program which has had this many issues. Can I get my money refunded to me? It is totally unusable and has caused lots of painful delays to my projects.

Also, OrCAD crashes when exporting a PDF using Ghostscript 64-bit and OrCADPS_17.4. The first time exporting it crashes, the second time it works. Another odd buggy issue.

Please help!

  • gvellet
    0

    Hi,

    I find strange that Cadence or your distributor support is not helping. If you pay for maintenance then they have to help you. They do help me a lot!

    Orcad capture is used by million of people, it is one of the best software around for schematic capture and the best for PCB editor.

    That being said, I got my fair share of trouble with Orcad Capture, it is a fragile application that may crash in many occasions. I learn over time how to avoid troubles.

    If you lose your design often, enable the auto backup. Menu Options-->autobackup

    Your description of the random trouble could be caused by two things: a corrupted Orcad installation, or defective / unstable computer hardware.

    -Did you try Orcad on another computer? Provide plenty of memory; 16GB ram is a must, especially with windows 11. If you spend 1000$us ( i dont know how much they charge now) on Orcad, you should not penny pinch on the computer hardware. 

    -Did you try to re-install Orcad from scratch? Another possible source of problems (slow down) for Orcad capture are the TCL add-ons from vendors like EMA-EDA. Therefore when you re-install Orcad, avoid installing any add-on .

    Your problem with ghostscript happens often to me. To avoid problem, when I want to export PDF after a long design session. I must close the design and exit Orcad. Then restart Orcad, Open design, then select the dsn file, and do: file-export-PDF

    good luck

  • Akshay khosla
    0

    Hi,

    We will contact you through separate channel of communication in order to gather some more data and to investigate this at your end.

  • grax
    0 in reply to Akshay khosla

    I lost all my work due to a bug in OrCAD X .... all the schematics are gone / incredible that this tool has not been updated with STANDARD database RECOVERY feature. Frankly this is really NOT ACCEPTABLE from a big tech company like cadence

  • Akshay khosla
    0 in reply to grax

    Hi Grax,

    OrCAD Capture offers Autobackup feature. You can access it from Options menu> Autobackup

    The design backup, as defined in the Multi-level Backup settings dialog, triggers only when the manual save of design has not been done within the specified backup time period.

    For example, if the backup time is defined as 10 minutes, a .DBK file (design backup file) will only be created if a change is done in the design and it is not manually saved for 10 minutes after the change is made.

    You can also find the below document regarding this.

    Article (20500474) Title: How does autobackup feature of Capture work?
    URL: support.cadence.com/.../ArticleAttachmentPortal

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