Intuitive Schematic Design Entry
Cadence® OrCAD® Capture design entry is the world's most popular schematic entry system for a simple reason: fast and universal design entry. Whether you're designing a new analog circuit, revising the schematic diagrams for an existing PCB, or a block diagram of HDL modules, it gives you everything you need to complete and verify your design quickly. OrCAD Capture delivers the intuitive interface and rich feature set that has made OrCAD Capture the de facto industry standard for schematic design entry.
Full-Featured Schematic Editor
Building on a legacy of fast, intuitive design tools, OrCAD Capture's flat and hierarchical Schematic Editor combines a standard Windows® user interface with all the functionality and features an engineer needs to develop even the most complex designs efficiently and to output design data for management and downstream processing.
- View and edit multiple schematic designs in a single session
- Reuse design data by copying and pasting within or between schematics
- Select parts from a comprehensive set of functional part libraries
- Place, move, drag, rotate, or mirror individual parts or grouped selections while preserving both visual and electrical connectivity
- Ensure design integrity through configurable Design and Electrical Rule checkers
- Create custom title blocks and drawing borders to meet the most exacting specifications.
- Insert drawing objects, bookmarks, logos, and bitmapped pictures
- Choose from metric or imperial unit grid spacing to meet all drawing standards
- Design digital circuits with VHDL or Verilog® text editor
Project Manager Coordinates All Design Data
OrCAD's sophisticated Project Manager greatly simplifies the critical job of organizing and tracking the various types of data generated in the design process. An expanding tree diagram makes it easy to structure and navigate all of your design files, including those generated by PSpice®, CIS and other plug-ins.
- Project Creation Wizard guides you through all the resources available for a specific design flow
- Centralized management of all design data permits a seamless interchange of schematic data for OrCAD plug-ins
- Hierarchy browser lets you navigate the entire schematic structure and open specific elements whether it's a schematic page, a part, or net instantly
- File tab groups multi-page schematics in folders for flat designs and creates new folders automatically for added levels of hierarchical designs
- Archive capability ensures the portability of your entire design project
Hierarchical Design and Reuse
OrCAD Capture boosts schematic editing efficiency by enabling you to reuse subcircuits without having to make multiple copies of them. Instead, using hierarchical blocks, you simply reference the same subcircuit multiple times.
- Just one instance of the circuitry for you to create and maintain
- Unlimited referencing and re-use of circuitry throughout your entire design
- Serve schematic pages from library files
- Automatic creation of hierarchical ports eliminates potential connection errors
- Sophisticated Property Editor clearly distinguishes properties in a subcircuit from those in referenced uses of that subcircuit in the design, allowing you to view and edit them all from one place
Libraries and Part Editor
Libraries and Part Editor You can access OrCAD's Library Editor directly from the OrCAD Capture user interface. Create and edit parts in the library or directly from the schematic page without interrupting your workflow.
- Intuitive graphical controls speed schematic part creation and editing
- Create new parts quickly by modifying existing ones
- Spreadsheet and pin array utilities make short work of creating and editing pin-intensive devices
- Bused vector pins reduce clutter on schematics
- Create FPGA and CPLD symbols quickly and easily with the part generator. Compatible with ten popular place and route pin reports
- Drag and drop parts between libraries Speed creation and maintenance of master library sets with design cache
- Revise a part in the original subcircuit only, or propagate the change to all other uses of the subcircuit in the design
- Control power and ground pin visibility and connectivity on a per-schematic basis
Integrate Huge I/O Count FPGAs and CPLDs
OrCAD Capture provides a library part generator to automate the integration of FPGA and CPLD devices into your system schematic. The Generate Part feature eases the tedium of creating library parts for devices that might have hundreds of pins. By reading the signal placement reports created by popular place and route applications like those from Actel and Xilinx, Generate Part can save you hours of painstaking work.
If during PC board layout phase the PCB designer discovers a more idealized signal placement scheme for the package or additional functionality is added to the PLD the system engineer must modify the system schematics to reflect this change again, an error prone task to synchronize. Generate Part can assist with an annotate option which will modify an existing symbol with new pin assignments.
Easy Entry of Part, Pin, and Net Data
Access all part, net, pin, and title block properties, or any subset, and make changes quickly through the Capture spreadsheet Property Editor.
- Select a circuit element, grouped area or entire page then add/edit/delete part, net or pin properties
- Globally apply specific property names across all your designs to meet your particular netlist or other output requirements. This maintains consistency, reduces manual errors, and eliminates multiple re-entry
- Browse and instantly visit any part, net, hierarchical port, off page connector, bookmark, or design rule error marker from a single reference point
Verify Circuits Early with Design Rule Check
The configurable Design Rule Check (DRC) function in OrCAD Capture lets you thoroughly verify your design before committing to downstream processes, saving the time and cost of late cycle modifications.
- Report identical part identifiers
- Identify invalid packaging Detect off-grid objects (can prevent connectivity)
- Configure which electrical violations to report and assign severity warnings
- Check entire design or specific modules
Reports
OrCAD Capture creates basic bill of materials (BOM) outputs, drawing on the information contained in the schematic database.
- Extract all part properties in the schematic design and output them to a text file
- Automatically package parts with reference designators prior to report generation
Part Selection
While placing a component, you can confirm it visually, edit its properties as needed, then place it all in one smooth sequence.
- Zero-in quickly on the exact library part you want, using wildcard searches
- Pick your recent part choices from the most recently used (MRU) menu
- Choose a logic gate or DeMorgan equivalent
- Edit schematic parts graphically prior to placement
- Add, modify and delete part properties at any time
- Place previously used parts fast by grabbing them from the project design cache
- Automatically assign reference designators during or after part placement. Update all, or just unidentified parts, or reset all to placeholder values
- Add libraries to a project from any drive or directory without leaving the part selector
Interface Capabilities OrCAD
Capture can work in concert with other CAD applications with minimal translation hassles or integration problems by importing and exporting virtually every commonly used design file format.
- Export of DXF files to AutoCADT
- View and redline schematic with MYRIADT
- Import and export EDIF 2 0 0 graphic netlist
- Export EDIF 2 0 0 netlist format
- Import MicroSim® schematic
- Export of more than 30 netlist formats, including VHDL, Verilog®, PSpice®, SPICE, and PADS Interface with Cadence® Allegro® with forward and back annotation
- Interface with Cadence® NC-VHDL Desktop and Synplicity Synplify® for FPGA design
- Interface with NC-VHDL Desktop and Cadence® NC-Verilog® Desktop for boardlevel (multi-chips) digital simulation
- Creation of custom netlists using Microsoft Visual BASIC
Printing and Plotting
Produce professional hardcopy through any output device supported by Microsoft Windows®.
- Print Preview to ensure proper scale and orientation
- Export to the DXF format for CAD interchange
Getting Help
When you have a question or need to accomplish a specific task, the information you need is never more than a few mouse clicks away.
- Tap into the knowledge of the OrCAD Capture designer community
- Find the answer you need by searching the online help system, and navigate quickly between related topics with extensive hypertext cross references
- Come up to speed quickly with the award-winning Learning Capture online interactive training tutorial
- Jump directly to any topic of interest in the online Capture User's Guide in Adobe® Acrobat® format (Adobe Acrobat Reader included)
System Requirements
Operating System
- Windows 2008 Server, Windows 2003 Server, all Service Packs (32-bit only)
- Windows XP Professional
- Windows Vista (32 and 64 bit) except Home Basic.
- Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit) except Home Premium
Note: Cadence SPB and OrCAD products do not support Windows 2000, Windows XP Home Edition, Windows NT operating system (versions 4.0 and earlier).
Hardware
- Intel IA-32 compatible (includes Intel P4 EMT and AMD OpteronTM); 1.2 GHz minimum; 2.4 GHz or more is recommended.
- DVD-ROM drive
- Ethernet card (for network communications and security hostID)
- Three-button Microsoft-compatible mouse
Note: Cadence SPB products do not support the IPF chip.
Minimum Hardware
- 1 GB physical memory
- 10 GB disk space
- virtual memory should be at least double the available physical memory
- 1024x768 resolution with 64,000 colours
Recommended Hardware
- 2 GB physical memory
- 50 GB disk space
- virtual memory should be at least double the available physical memory
- 1280x1024 Colour quality 32 bit graphics
A dedicated graphics card is recommended.