Orcad Layout finally dead

To our valued OrCAD Layout customers:

As demonstrated in the OrCAD® product 16.0 release, Cadence® continues to
invest in providing a fully scalable PCB design solution for our customers –
one that grows with you as your PCB designs grow in complexity. We've all
seen the PCB design landscape change dramatically in recent years. In order
to help customers meet current market demands and maximize productivity,
Cadence continues to leverage the power of its proven Allegro® PCB technology
within our OrCAD product line. This allows Cadence to offer customers unique
suites and technology bundles that address current and future design
challenges.

This letter is intended to communicate some important developments regarding
the future of Cadence OrCAD Layout. Cadence has begun the End-of-Life process
for Cadence OrCAD Layout technology based products.

Please Note: Cadence OrCAD Capture, OrCAD Capture CIS, and PSpice® technology
are all integral parts of Cadence’s long-term product strategy and are not
affected by this notice.


Should not have been released in the first place. That unwieldu POS.


Effective July 31, 2007, Cadence will no longer sell the following Cadence

OrCAD Layout based technology products:

1. OrCAD Layout (PO1410)
2. OrCAD Layout Plus (PO1420)
3. OrCAD Unison PCB (PO1510)
4. OrCAD Unison Ultra (PO1530)
5. Layout Studio (PS1430)

We acknowledge that transitioning software systems is never easy and is often
a juggling act between investing in learning new technologies and meeting
current business priorities. EMA is committed to ensuring we do everything
possible to help minimize the impact on you, wherever possible. To help ease
the transition, Cadence is providing OrCAD Layout customers with multiple
paths for migrating to new technology that leverages the power of Allegro PCB
Editor. Learn more about the various transition path options by visiting
http://www.ema-eda.com/orcadlayout.

The products entering End of Sale will be supported thru March 31, 2009.
After that date, these products will no longer be supported for hot-fixes or
support calls and will not be shipped on the OrCAD CD set.

If you have any questions, or would like to discuss these changes and how it
may impact you, please contact your EMA Account Manager. You may also contact
the EMA technical support team at 585-334-6001, Option 5, or by email at
.

 

No support after March 2009? Don't know if that's even legal but that
certainly has the potential of causing serious damage to a company's
reputation.

I've switched to Cadsoft Eagle a while ago. I guess I am now more happy
than ever that I did ;-)

 

Nah, as the OP said, the products being dropped were never any good anyway...
people will be happy when they start using just about anything else instead.


---Joel

 

I've heard that, too. But good or not, if they sell a product and then
announce that they will drop support less than two years after stopping
the sales that is not a good thing at all. If a company did that to me
they would be added to "the list".

 

Did they ever support it? There hasn't been a decent upgrade to
Layout since Cadence bought OrCAD (other than to add the annoying
dongle and fix a few bugs), they seem to put all they're development
effort into Allegro. I've been using Layout since 1996 and I'm now
looking at other options. Altium seems nice and imports OrCAD Layout
files fairly well (though I've seen some issues with copper pours).

 

Have you considered Pulsonix?

 

I suspect Pulsonix could sell a few more seats if they managed to get ORCAD
import working *well*...

 

Got my PCB software of ebay for less than £20 !!!

 

Yeah, but it doesn't import ORCAD either.

 

Update: The folks at Pulsonix got wind of this thread (squeaky wheel gets the
grease and all?), asked me for an ORCAD file that didn't import correctly, I
sent them one, they sent me some updated DLLs a few days later, and all is
well. Pulsonix import of ORCAD files still isn't 100% perfect, but it's
really pretty good now -- certainly as good as other packages I've seen, and
well past the threshold of, "What's faster -- just re-drawing the schematic
from scratch, or importing it and then spending time cleaning up the results?"

---Joel

 

Wait until the Payware ECAD Guild hears about this.
Pulsonix will be booted out for sure.

Responsive corps are SO cool.