Frankly, I wish I would have put the time into ironing out those kinks instead of working so hard on Orcad PCB Editor Lite. Some of those hurt a bit until you adapt. I think I also downloaded the Kicad EPUB book, too. Bryce’s Kicad Tutorial, I had pretty much all the ammo I needed to get not-totally afraid of basic PCB work. After I found that hulk-of-a-man Chris Gammel’s “Getting to Blinky” series and B. Learning Kicad was no picnic, but it was along the lines of learning Photoshop, Cubase, Dreamweaver, or any other fairly involved program. I’ve had 5 PCBs printed at jlcpcb with three more I hope to order this week. Unfortunately, I never really felt like I hit bottom. A month ago, my boss told me he wanted a circuit done in Orcad. There are commandments prohibiting the coveting of the neighbor’s PCB software.

Pick a tool that you don’t expect to outgrow, master it, and don’t look back. Frankly, I don’t think you SHOULD learn more than one if you have a choice. But I wanted to demonstrate how OrCAD prioritizes the 'Find' dialog options.Not everyone gets a chance to dive in HARDCORE to multiple PCB programs and learn the idiosyncrasies of each. It is actually easier to simply click 'All Off', and then check only the 'Cline Segs' box. This example starts with all options selected, and then successively removes them. The information displayed is for that one segment of copper, and the width is available. Now selecting a trace only highlights that one line segment. This causes OrCAD to ignore entire CLines, and so it will start selecting individual segments ('CLine Segs): As before, the Connect Line may have varying trace widths, so the information isn't displayed.įinally, uncheck 'CLines' in the 'Find' dialog. The selection stops when the trace hits a via, another component pad, etc. You can't see it in my screenshots, but the selection includes the entire trace from one connection point to another. Now, the connect line (or 'CLine') is highlighted. Its next priority would be to select a 'Connect Line': It is possible for this net to have many different trace widths, so OrCAD doesn't show that information.īut you don't want to know about the entire net, so uncheck 'Nets' in the 'Find' dialog (again, see the red rectangles).

Your 'Show Element' window describes the entire net, and the mouse-hover text is net-specific.

In this case, when you highlight a trace, the entire net becomes highlighted. Starting with everything in the 'Find' dialog selected (notice the red rectangles): Let's assume you are in 'general edit' mode. This is difficult to explain let me show you some screenshots. The information displayed by OrCAD depends on your current 'Application Mode' ('general', 'etch', 'placement', etc) and the options you have selected in the 'Find' dialog.

Pcb editor lite