For engineers and designers who have spent years working in OrCAD, the prospect of migrating to a new electronic design automation (EDA) environment like Altium Designer can seem daunting. You have built up hard-won familiarity with OrCAD's tools and workflows over countless PCB projects. Is it worth disrupting your productivity to learn an entirely new system?
While the short-term adaptation effort should not be dismissed, the long-term benefits of upgrading to a modern, unified platform like Altium Designer are substantial. Here is an overview of the key improvements and new capabilities you can expect after making the switch from OrCAD.
Streamlined, Unified Design Environment
One of the first things you will notice in Altium is the unified design environment. Instead of constantly switching between separate applications for capture, layout, libraries, etc., everything is accessible from a single interface. The same panels, shortcuts, and design data are available whether working on the schematic or PCB layout.
This unified environment follows the natural flow of the design process - from logical schematic capture down to physical PCB layout. The continuity between phases helps reduce errors and saves the hassle of manually synchronizing data between separate tools.
You no longer have to breakpoint your thinking and workflow to jump between applications. It becomes much faster to move across schematic and layout to cross-probe nets and connections. The unified data model maintains full synchronicity at all times without user effort.
Overall, the streamlined workflow and unified environment in Altium will likely be the most immediate boost to engineer productivity compared to using OrCAD. No more clumsy context switching between Capture, Allegro, Librarian, and other disjointed apps.
Improved Project and Design Management
Another area where Altium shines compared to OrCAD is the underlying infrastructure for design data management. Areas that see major improvement include:
Revision control - Altium has a built-in revisions system to track incremental changes to designs. No more manually managing file backups or relying on external version control systems.
Data integrity - The unified data model intrinsically maintains consistency between schematic and layout. OrCAD's fragmented tools often fall out of sync.
Design reuse - The Altium vault gives a searchable database of reusable schematic fragments, footprints, and other design documents. OrCAD has limited ability to reuse elements.
Project history - Altium keeps a detailed project activity log and audit trail. This simplifies regulatory compliance and documentation for ISO/quality systems.
Release management - Altium includes engineering release workflows to package designs before sending to manufacturing. OrCAD relies on informal release procedures.
With OrCAD, design data management is largely an afterthought. Core capabilities like revisions and release workflows require third-party extensions. The robust infrastructure in Altium provides important advantages right out of the box for managing and reusing design data.
Intelligent PCB Layout
Moving from OrCAD's Allegro layout tool to Altium's unified board editor takes some adaptation but opens up more intelligent layout features. Right away you gain advantages like:
- Real-time design rule checking - Get live DRC feedback to fix violations during routing rather than after.
- Interactive routing - The new routing engine in Altium is optimized for high-speed, push-and-shove routing with minimal modes.
- Dynamic copper pouring - Intelligent copper fill that dynamically adjusts to routing in real time. No more manual pouring.
- 3D PCB visualization - Instant 3D rendering shows the PCB model in real-time during routing. No need to switch to external 3D tools.
- Length-based trace tuning - Match route lengths visually when length matching signals rather than by manual counting.
- Draftsman integration - Built-in manufacturing drawings generation for fabrication and assembly.
- ActiveRoute autorouting - Revolutionary new autorouting approach with interactive routing right in the editor.
These intelligent PCB layout tools and real-time feedback ultimately help you create higher quality board designs in less time compared to Allegro. The modern engines and UX conventions make Altium very familiar within just days of hands-on usage for most OrCAD users.
FPGA and MCAD Integration
A major area where Altium pulls ahead of OrCAD is integration with external tools. This covers both FPGA design software and mechanical CAD systems.
For FPGA workflows, Altium integrates directly with vendor tools like Xilinx Vivado, Intel Quartus, and Microchip Libero to streamline back-and-forth PCB/FPGA development. You can:
- Automatically synchronize I/O constraints between schematics and the FPGA tool
- Visualize HDL signal connectivity from the FPGA directly on the schematic
- Run HDL simulations and see results linked back to the source
For mechanical integration, Altium fits into digital workflows like:
- Bidirectional MCAD integration with major tools like SOLIDWORKS, Inventor, Creo, NX, etc.
- Automatic PCB footprint creation from imported 3D STEP models
- Visualizing the PCB situated in the full mechanical assembly
- Automatic ECAD/MCAD collision detection
This tight tool integration ultimately helps reduce errors and manual rework when developing complex devices involving FPGAs, ICs, and enclosures. The connectivity between domains makes multiphysics development smoother.
Simulation and Analysis
To help identify issues early while they are still easy to correct, Altium provides built-in analysis features. These allow validating and optimizing designs right from within the design environment rather than relying on external tools.
SPICE simulations - Run electrical simulations to verify circuit operation using integrated SPICE and mixed-signal engines. Includes native links to industry standards like SIMetrix.
Power plane analysis - Visually inspect power plane connections and run heatmaps of current density to identify weak spots in power distribution.
Signal integrity - Overlay signal propagation and profile waveforms to ensure performance meets timing margins and avoids overshoot or ringing.
Design rule checking - Live DRC actively validates manufacturability by flagging violations during PCB layout.
Layer stack validation - Tools help pre-validate layer stackup configurations and impedances before sending designs to fabrication.
ECAD/MCAD validation - Compare PCB with mechanical models to identify any collisions, clearance issues, or misalignments.
Performing more engineering validation and analysis up front ultimately means you catch difficult issues while they are still cheap and easy to fix. This prevents costly respins down the line. The tight integration of these analysis features helps analyze and optimize designs fluidly within your existing workflow.
Supply Chain and Manufacturing Integrations
To ease the process of securing components and ultimately manufacturing PCBs, Altium provides live integration with leading parts suppliers and manufacturing networks.
For components, integrations like Octopart and SnapEDA give instant access to real-time parts data like current pricing, inventory, lifecycle status, manufacturer links, and availability. By integrating this supply chain visibility right within the design tools, you reduce the hassles of manually gathering component data from separate portals.
To ease manufacturing handoff, integrations with platforms like Supplyframe streamline uploading Gerbers, comparing quotes, selecting vendors, and tracking orders. This replaces manually emailing fabrication shops and tracking orders in spreadsheets. The integration removes wasted steps to get from completed design to physical PCB.
Overall, these supply chain and manufacturing integrations ultimately help you secure components faster and get boards fabricated more efficiently compared to traditional disconnected processes.
Improved Design Reuse Options
A major focus within Altium is improving design reuse across projects - an area where OrCAD is very limited. Altium provides robust features for reusing circuits, layouts, and components like:
- Managed projects - Controlled-access repositories for design templates and verified reference designs. These provide starting points for reuse rather than starting each new design from scratch.
- Project templates - Reuse common project configurations like design rules and folder structure to maintain consistency.
- Version control - Native integration of SVN or Git allows versioning and reusing design blocks and components across revisions.
- Parametric components - Components include configurable parameters to rapidly generate reusable variations like different voltages or packages.
- Altium vault - Consolidated part library system with advanced features like lifecycle management, sourcing, and procurement data right alongside components.
Together these capabilities transform reuse from an informal process to systematic part of the overall methodology. This prevents reinventing the wheel for common circuits and components used across designs. Ultimately reuse leads to improved design quality and shorter development cycles.
Additional Infrastructure Tools
Wrapping up the expanded feature set offered by Altium, additional infrastructure tools ease administrative burdens that traditionally fell through the cracks in OrCAD-based workflows:
- Native scripting - Customize and automate repetitive tasks through Altium's Visual Basic scripting environment. Far more flexibility than OrCAD's minimal GUI customization options.
- Enterprise integrations - Tight integrations with enterprise platforms like Teamcenter, Windchill, and Enovia streamline integrating electronics design into broader organizational workflows.
- Access control - Granular user access permissions allow limiting access to confidential documents or restricting certain actions to authorized designers.
- Cloud compatibility - The Altium 365 platform provides optional cloud storage and real-time multiuser design collaboration capabilities not feasible in OrCAD.
While not necessarily glamorous, these infrastructure capabilities simplify important functions like customization, collaboration, and regulatory compliance required in most professional organizations. They fill critical gaps between electronics design and wider business systems.
What Does This Mean for Engineers?
Stepping back, what do all these feature improvements mean for engineering teams looking to upgrade from OrCAD to Altium Designer?
- Faster development cycles - The unified tools and focus on design reuse let you move from concept to PCB faster with each incremental design.
- Fewer errors - Unified data, FPGA/MCAD integrations, and analysis tools reduce mismatched connections and integration issues across domains.
- Improved quality - Advanced PCB layout and analysis optimize electrical and physical design to meet performance requirements reliably.
- Shorter learning curves - The intuitive, modern interface conventions in Altium allow new team members to ramp up faster. Minimal legacy clutter.
- Better documentation - Built-in drawing generation, data management, and project planning tools reduce compliance overhead.
- Lower total cost - While initial license costs are comparable, gains in reuse and efficiency provide substantial long-term savings in engineering time and resources.
For organizations looking to modernize their design workflows and improve development throughput, Altium Designer delivers an extremely compelling set of advantages over legacy environments like OrCAD.
The drive for continuous improvement requires keeping up with modern EDA tools. While change initially brings short-term costs, the long-term efficiency and quality gains ultimately justify upgrading from dated solutions like OrCAD to innovative unified platforms like Altium.
What is the Transition Process Like?
Given the magnitude of improvements covered, what is involved in actually migrating existing OrCAD designs into Altium? Here is a high-level look at the transition process:
Training - Altium provides extensive training resources from self-paced courses to personalized instructor-led training. For teams, onsite training camps can come on location to ramp up large groups. Hands-on experience is crucial before kicking off any serious projects. Plan for around 40 hours of training for experienced OrCAD users.
Test projects - Complete some test designs end-to-end within Altium. This familiarizes yourself with differences in key workflows like library management, simulation setup, and manufacturing generation. Lean on documentation and Altium support resources during these initial transitions.
Library migration - Work through converting existing OrCAD libraries into Altium's unified component format. Some manual cleanup is expected for complex elements. Much of the migration can leverage automated conversion tools.
Methodology adaptation - Document any workflow changes needed to align with Altium's environment like renaming conventions, designrule scopes, etc. This is a chance to refine any legacy OrCAD methods during the transition.
Project conversion - Finally, work through migrating real projects into Altium. Some manual tuning will be required on complex designs. Lean on Altium's technical experts for assistance with large conversions.
Plan around 1-2 months for individual engineers or small teams to fully transition based on project complexity. Larger teams and organizations may take 3-6 months depending on scale and training capacities. There will be some short-term productivity impacts but the gains after adapting to Altium far outweigh initial growing pains.
What Support Options Exist?
Recognizing that upgrading EDA tools represents a major transition for engineering teams, Altium provides extensive onboarding support:
Documentation - Altium provides hundreds of detailed documentation articles and procedural guides to cover common questions during or after migration. These make the transition as smooth as possible.
Forums - Tap into Altium's large user community forums to interact with fellow engineers who have made the switch from OrCAD or other legacy tools.
Technical support - Altium has dedicated applications engineers available for 1-on-1 design assistance, troubleshooting, or questions as they arise during the transition.
Altium Academy - From webcasts to local seminars, their training experts offer numerous learning opportunities to help engineers rapidly come up to speed on Altium.
For teams undertaking larger migrations, Altium provides additional options like onsite training camps, dedicated resident engineers who work alongside your team during the transition, and migration assessment reviews to assist planning the move.
Leveraging these onboarding resources helps minimize productivity impacts during the transition and ensures you are fully leveraging Altium's tools effectively for your unique workflows.
FAQs About Migrating from OrCAD to Altium
What are the biggest challenges or limitations when switching to Altium?
The biggest initial challenges when migrating to Altium are:
- Learning the new interface and interactive workflows
- Adapting existing hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts to Altium conventions
- Becoming efficient with Altium's unified component management model compared to switching between OrCAD Allegro and Librarian
- Tuning any legacy OrCAD methodologies to fit Altium's environment
- Accepting that there is a temporary learning curve and dip in productivity at first
With some patience and leveraging training resources, most OrCAD users find these limitations very manageable within the first 1-2 months. The long-term gains in productivity and efficiency ultimately justify the short-term growing pains of learning a new, more advanced toolset.
What are the biggest benefits observed by teams who have switched?
The most common benefits reported by engineers after transitioning from OrCAD to Altium are:
- Faster, more intuitive workflow and user interface
- Tighter integration between schematic capture and PCB layout tools
- Built-in capabilities like version control and release management
- Advanced PCB layout features like rigid-flex and high-speed routing
- Reduced errors and changes thanks to unified data model and integrations
- Easier reuse of designs across projects
- Generally improved design quality and performance optimization
Together these advantages directly translate to faster development cycles, improved product reliability, and ultimately shorter time to market. For organizations looking to accelerate development, there is a clear ROI in upgrading from legacy environments like OrCAD to modern tools like Altium.
How difficult is it to convert existing OrCAD libraries to Altium format?
Altium provides an automated utility to help migrate existing OrCAD libraries into the unified *.LibPkg format used natively in Altium. This handles much of the tedium automatically.
Some manual clean-up of complex components is expected. Plan for about 1-2 weeks for a single engineer to fully migrate a moderately-sized existing OrCAD library set to Altium. For teams with larger component databases, dedicate additional resources. Lean on Altium's technical resources for assistance with large library migrations.
Overall the automated conversion combined with Altium's guided migration resources make bringing existing libraries over very manageable compared to starting component creation from scratch.
What training resources help engineers coming from OrCAD get up to speed on Altium quickly?
Altium provides extensive training resources tailored for new users coming from a background with OrCAD or other legacy EDA tools. Their training platform includes:
- Dedicated migration course covering key interface and workflow differences
- Webinars focused on easing switch from OrCAD to Altium
- General introductory courses to provide baseline knowledge
- Role-based training for disciplines like PCB layout or FPGA design
- Certification tracks to validate learned skills
- Custom course development for unique tool use cases
Altium recommends around 40 hours of training for experienced OrCAD users to become proficient. Opt for in-person instructor-led or onsite training when possible for faster knowledge transfer over self-paced options. Multiday "bootcamp" style trainings are ideal for larger teams.
What support options exist for assistance during the migration?
Altium has dedicated applications engineers and technical specialists available to provide personalized support during the transition from OrCAD. This includes:
- 1-on-1 design reviews to check progress and provide optimization tips
- Troubleshooting help if running into roadblocks with specific workflows or conversions
- Assistance with large library, project, or design rule migrations
- Onsite and remote technical resources to work closely with engineers
For large customers, Altium also offers tailored services like health checks, pilot migrations, and transition assessments. Their experts can work closely throughout the process - from initial technical evaluation through final transition - to transfer knowledge and make the switch as smooth as possible.
Conclusion
Upgrading from entrenched EDA tools like OrCAD to innovative unified solutions like Altium Designer marks a major modernization leap for engineering teams. While disruption to existing workflows is inevitable during the transition, the long-term benefits in productivity, reduced errors, and improved quality provided by Altium ultimately justify this upgrade effort.
Leveraging available training resources, consulting services, and Altium's applications engineering team will help smooth the migration off of OrCAD. Within a relatively short time, engineers can be leveraging Altium's advanced unified workflow and embedded infrastructure tools to achieve better product development outcomes.
The effort to modernize EDA environments on a regular cadence ensures engineering groups avoid stagnating on dated legacy systems. Staying current with tools like Altium that connect into updated supply chain and manufacturing ecosystems is crucial for sustained competitiveness. While potentially daunting at first, migrating from OrCAD to
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