Cadence (OrCAD) Capture vs System Capture

Kenneth I agree with you the RMB or double click on a pin to pop up a concise dialog box for editing is superior in 16.6 than 17.2 or 17.4 for that matter. In 17.2 or 17.4 your talking alot more clicks to get a simple task done & further mouse moves too.

If you pop up the pn editor as Steve suggests in 17.2 or 4 one has to double click in the cell just to get a pop down for something like a pin type etc. That dialog box in 17.2 & 17.4 only becomes dynamic after you click in a cell,
"More useless clicks"

In 17.2 & 4 there has been a change to how properties of a symbol are displayed aka right pane. Generally I think this is good and clearer than what we had in 16.6. From a UI perspective that properties panel is missing something, AN "Add Pin" button. Adding a pin can be done using a short cut key - Who uses those anyway ? or via a trip to the tool bar. Since a large focus of the UI aka obvious things such a properties having an "Add Pin" button there would be good because without a pin you got no properties. Actually you got nothing !

Other operations in 17.2 & 17.4 have become better. For example creating a Multi package symbol. The horrible symbol bounding box has also been tamed somewhat and works better than before as in 16.6.

There are some things that are missing that would be useful and do exist in competitors products. For example the ability to Copy & Paste "Attributes" from one symbol to say a new Symbol a user is creating. Keep in mind without the attributes your BOM's become pretty shy of important info such as a MFR/PN etc. One can get around this by having a base symbol that contain those attributes and using that particular symbol as the basis for a new symbol and then just use save-as to save it out to a OLB. The alternate is CIS, though your DB is going to have those attributes too. Better Schematic capture programs have a base set of attributes that can be used to drive a BOM or Footprint
in-place by default, hence creating new symbols and having the important info associated with them is alot easier than any version of capture.

The creation of a Netlist to drive a board was also easier in 16.6 because you have in one window your input board output board etc. In 17.2 & 17.4 this operation was split into two places, not too sure why they changed this but none the less a "Change" for either Changes sake or someone dropped the ball. Probably the latter.  

There seemed to be a push in 17.4 for an Altium look-alike. Not Original thinking there !. Personal preference would be excellent functionality first or useful additional features to make things easier for new & existing users.

I had not seen system capture yet, Might take a look.

All the best.

so then? How y'all loving "Allegro System Capture" now? :D

I just ended my latest attempt to give it a go and closed the tool after about an hour of fighting it.

It's obvious Cadence has given up on updating OrCAD Capture and thinks that this is the future...not going to happen here. Good luck with it everybody.

Why do you say Orcad has given up on Orcad Capture CIS?  Cadence rewrote it as a 64bit app for 17.4.  

Orcad still has growth possibilities that we discussed in another thread.   

If we used PSPICE for RF, I might be gushing even more.  (for us, its HFSS/AWR for everything.)

Cadence is constantly pushing out new auto-design features in Capture and everyone else is still struggling to catch up.