What is OrCAD?

For those who don’t know, OrCAD is a circuit design software suite designed by Cadence Design Systems. OrCAD is one of the big four with a 29% market share according to the below slide from Altium 2016 presentation.

According to my own experience, I see a lot of designs with OrCAD.

I have used KiCAD, Altium, and OrCAD, out of them OrCad is the one I used and am proficient with.

OrCAD with no doubt has a steep learning curve compared with Altium or KiCAD, which is not a bad thing by no means, the steep learning curve is due to the professional nature of the suite. personally, I prefer OrCAD over other suites I’ve used.

How I learned it?

There isn’t a lot of material for OrCAD out there to get yourself started, the resource I used and recommend is the book Complete PCB Design Using OrCAD Capture and PCB Editor 2nd Edition, the Book also serves as a kick-start PCB design guideline.