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  3. Wow, OrCAD is horribly written software

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Wow, OrCAD is horribly written software

cliffc8488
cliffc8488 over 10 years ago

I just upgraded from 9.20 to 16.6 and the same bugs are still here 15 years later and a bunch of new ones have been added.  Who wrote this steaming pile of ****?

1. Cursor constantly flickers between pointer and hourglass when moving across a part.

2. When moving multiple selected components you have to click right on a component.  If you click within the bounding boxes but not on the component your selection is canceled.  Didn't use to be this way.

3. Moving components/nets often results in nets being dragged non-orthogonally.  It wasn't like this in 9.20.  How hard is it to simply check if a net will end up non-orthogonal and anchor it?  Feels like it was written by a bunch of summer interns.

4. Screen constantly redraws (often multiple times) even when not required.  Windows that are hidden are constantly redrawing.  Reeks of lazy, sloppy code (oh something changed?  Screw it, redraw everything.  Do it a few times to be safe.)  Heck if I change my preferences it redraws every window.  WTF is that?

5. Slow, slow, slow!  I'm on a 3.5 GHz Core I7 with gobs of RAM and this thing runs like it's running on a Commodore 64.

6. Cursor doesn't change to selected operation (i.e. draw a net, place a no-connect, etc.) until you move the cursor slightly.  This often results in the impression that the command didn't "take".  For example if I press "x" the cursor doesn't change to an "x" unless I move the mouse a little which makes me think I pressed the wrong key.

7. Window Z-ordering is poorly coded.  When opening a new project the project window doesn't open in front necessarily.  This caused me to lose a whole day's worth of work because I thought I was closing a different project I had just opened for reference.  Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

8. Text doesn't display properly when zoomed out fully.  Some text displays fine, other text just displays as a black box.  Didn't use to be this way.  No apparent rhyme or reason as to why it will or won't display properly.  Oh and the bug where it doesn't use the default font is still there 15 years later.

9. Dragging/moving a large number of objects is laughably slow.  The screen redraws so slowly as to be almost impossible to use.

10. No new libraries?!!!!  There's been an awful lot of new ICs in the last 15 years.  Would it kill you to include a few?

I remember at 9.30 they moved the entire project over to India and the program became almost unusable.  I reverted to 9.20 and stayed there.  I needed to update because a manufacturer-provided library is not compatible with 9.20.  It's almost comical that 15 years later the program hasn't improved and is now slower and more buggy.  For $1800 I expected something that at least works decently.

FWIW, I'm the President/CEO and owner of a technology company.  I still do design work in addition to running the company.  If my company's products were this poor we would have gone out of business by now.  And don't get me started on how slow this website is.  Feels like it's running on an 8086 over dial-up in some remote part of Africa.

Even if any of these bugs get addressed my guess is that it will be tasked to some entry-level engineer at "Bangladesh Software Consortium" and the fixes will be of the "if(this) then do this but if this then do this instead however if this then ignore that and just redraw everything".  Spaghetti-code.

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  • cliffc8488
    cliffc8488 over 10 years ago
    The disaster that is OrCAD 16.6 continues. Fired it up today and it wouldn't start. Window was halfway off the screen and wouldn't respond ("Not Responding"). Uninstalled and re-installed twice to no avail. A call to tech support resulted in a surly representative instructing me to edit the registry.
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  • cliffc8488
    cliffc8488 over 10 years ago
    The disaster that is OrCAD 16.6 continues. Fired it up today and it wouldn't start. Window was halfway off the screen and wouldn't respond ("Not Responding"). Uninstalled and re-installed twice to no avail. A call to tech support resulted in a surly representative instructing me to edit the registry.
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