Protel vs. Orcad vs. Multisim

[Jeff Stephens]

I am an electronics technician having received my training while in the US
Navy. I will be
enrolling in an electrical engineering program this fall. I am considering
which of these
software packages to purchase. Is any one clearly superior to the others,
or are they all
about the same?

Regards,
Jeff Stephens

 

[Animesh Maurya]

"Jeff Stephens" <jsteve17@tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message news:<Dip1b.70460$K4.3306896@twister.tampabay.rr.com>...

I am an electronics technician having received my training while in the US
Navy. I will be
enrolling in an electrical engineering program this fall. I am considering
which of these
software packages to purchase. Is any one clearly superior to the others,
or are they all
about the same?

Regards,
Jeff Stephens

I was also asking the same question few days back. OrCAD & Protel are
definitely very powerful and professional circuit simulators and Board
designing CAD. I cant say much about Protel, but I like OrCAD a lot.
Mutlisim is good only for beginners as it is very easy to handle and
play with.

Animesh Maurya

 

[ĺnřn˙mřu§]

On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 13:56:51 GMT, "Jeff Stephens" <jsteve17@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:

I am an electronics technician having received my training while in the US
Navy. I will be enrolling in an electrical engineering program this fall. I am
considering which of these software packages to purchase. Is any one
clearly superior to the others, or are they all about the same?
When Protel first came out it was copied from Orcad. There was a court battle

and Orcad won it. Sense then, Protel was forced to clean up its act. But, their
product (in my option) was terrible! It keep crashing with little to no tech support
from them. Their 98SE is a fairly stable product and when it crashs, you don't
seem to loose everything. (I have three years experence with it.)

Orcad is an older and more stable product. But, it too isn't prefect. Its hard to
learn and its auto router (in v9.1) was so fussy, they gave you another auto
router to cover for it. Orcad has great tech support for the first year and they
offer great classes to learn how to use their software and the have message
bases and other forums were you can get answers to your questions. The
draw back to Orcad is it was bought by Cadence and Cadence has always
meant dollar signs... Also, will Cadence keep Orcad going or will they kill it?
In version 9.2 they removed PSpice from the software bundle. What is next?
Who knows.... (I hate to think of just how many years I have used it...)

I have never used (or heard of) Multisim.

I think Orcad is the best of the two. But, I also think Cadence is pushing its
Orcad users towards their high end PCB tools.