Migrating from Altium to OrCAD PCB Designer

Migration Guide
Migrating from Altium to OrCAD PCB Designer

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Table of Contents
Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Prerequisites of Translating Altium Designer Schematic Data
to OrCAD Capture Format Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Import your Altium Designer Schematic Data to OrCAD Capture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Import Your Altium PCB Design into OrCAD PCB Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Synchronize the schematic to the Migrated PCB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Next Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

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Overview
Choosing the right PCB design solution is never an easy task. No matter if you are a startup company
looking for tools to develop your first product, a large enterprise wanting to improve the productivity and
efficiency of your design team, or somewhere in between, selecting a PCB solution can be a daunting task.
Nobody wants to get 75% of the way through a design to find that the software you selected is not going
to achieve what you need it to do.
There are many aspects you have to consider when choosing your PCB Design solution, including:
Do the capabilities of the offering and its technology meet your design requirements?
Whats the cost of the software? Does it fit within your budget?
Whats the support service like? Will you be able to get quick responses to your questions and access
online tutorials?
Can its technology and solution scale with your needs? As designs are getting more and more complex,
will the capabilities of the tool adjust accordingly?
How many other companies in your industry are using this tool and what is their feedback?
With OrCAD PCB Design Solutions, you can be confident that you will have the right solution and technol-
ogies to meet all of your design challenges today and tomorrow. Here are five of many reasons why:
Reason 1: Security of Scalability for Your Future Design Challenge
Cadence and OrCAD provide the only full scalable PCB design solution on the market that can seamlessly
grow with your needs. Invest for the future with a tool that can grow as your business does.
Reason 2: Affordable Price and Flexible Purchase Models
OrCAD PCB design is not a one-size fits all enterprise.
OrCAD provides flexible pricing tiers enabling design teams to access the capabilities they need for the price
they can afford.
Reason 3: Cutting-edge Technologies
OrCAD offers constraint-driven design, advanced auto/interactive routing, high-speed design, DFM,
dynamic shape technology, and much more, helping you deliver high-quality, first-time-right designs in the
shortest timeframes.
Reason 4: Fully Customizable and Ecosystem Empowered
Open APIs allow you to extend and customize your design environment to meet your unique needs.
Connect to external systems, generate custom reports, even customize the UI. It is all possible with OrCAD.
Reason 5: Industrys Best Customer Support
OrCAD products are backed by Cadence and their network or certified Cadence Channel Partners (CCP).
Get help when you need it by phone or email from local, knowledgeable PCB design professionals.
Like many companies selecting OrCAD PCB Design Solutions, you may have existing or legacy designs you
need to convert or translate into an appropriate design format. The good news is that these OrCAD tools
are supplied with an integrated and proven Altium design translator built in.
This guide will walk you through the steps and process involved in getting your design IP into the OrCAD
format so you can start realizing the advantages of moving to OrCAD!

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Prerequisites of Translating Altium Designer Schematic Data to

OrCAD Capture Format Data
STEP 1 - Prepare ASCII Schematic
Before you start translating your Altium Designer schematic data into OrCAD Capture format, the
schematic has to be saved to ASCII format within Altium Designer. This will replace the original binary file
by its ASCII equivalent. The location and file extension stay the same.

Your Altium Designer schematic data can be translated only if they are embedded in a PCB project
(*.PrjPCB), which manages the design documents needed to manufacture a PCB design.
A valid structure file (*.PrjPCBStructure) is needed. It will be generated after compiling the PCB project
and references the individual schematic pages (*.SchDoc).
If the project file does not exist, you can follow the steps below:
1. Select File New Project from the menu, the New Project dialog will open. From the list of available
project types, choose PCB Project.
2. Add the schematic documents *.SchDoc to the project
3. Compile the project (e.g. RMB Compile PCB Project)
For more information about setting up PCB projects, refer to the Altium Designer documentation.

Project Structure example

Each schematic page *.SchDoc is saved in ASCII format.

Project file *.PrjPCB acts as project master.
File *.PrjPCBStructure has references to schematic pages (relative path).
File *.PcbDoc is only needed when PCB has to be translated.

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Import your Altium Designer Schematic Data to OrCAD Capture

STEP 1 - Run the Altium Designer schematic translator
In OrCAD Capture, Click File >> Import Altium Schematic to launch Altium-Capture translator.

Browse to the ACSII file to be translated (*.prjPCB) and specify the output directory for the OrCAD Capture
project. Click on Translate button.

Once finished, open the project and check schematic for translation errors.

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Import Your Altium PCB Design into OrCAD PCB Editor

STEP 1 - Preparation
Before you start translating your Altium PCB design data into OrCAD PCB Editor, PCB design data has to be
saved as a PCB ASCII File (*.PcbDoc) within Altium PCB Designer.

STEP 2 - Running the Altium PCB Translator

In OrCAD PCB Editor, under the file menu, choose Import >> CAD Translators >>Altium PCB.

Browse to the ASCII *.PcbDoc Altium Designer design file to be translated; see note below on creating
individual symbol definitions.

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Note: When the Create Individual Symbol Definitions box is checked, the translator will generate
a separate symbol definition for each instance of a component by adding a suffix. For example
0805_1, 0805_2, 0805_3 and so on. This is to account for instance-specific footprint modifications
within the Altium Designer design. In OrCAD PCB Editor, separate symbol definitions are beneficial
when libraries are exported to disk.
By default this option is unchecked, which means that the translator will create one symbol
definition only for a given Altium Designer footprint. Use this option only if instance-specific changes
have been made in the Altium tool design.

Synchronize the schematic to the Migrated PCB

If you plan to translate a complete Altium Designer project, including both schematic and PCB, after you
have translated the schematic into OrCAD Capture, run Tools >> Create >> Netlist and specify an empty
database. Then open this database with OrCAD PCB Editor.
Within OrCAD PCB Editor run Altium PCB translator and navigate again to the *.prjPCB file. The
translator will retain netlist and device logic and translate only the remaining data in order to complete
theboard.
Note: In order to get the right design hierarchy structure in translated designs, it is mandatory to provide a
*.PrjPcbStructure file along with *.PrjPcb.
If this file is not supplied, the translator does not know which is the top/root drawing in your project.
If the case structure file is not present, you can set the root drawing in the translated schematic
before creating a netlist.

Next Steps
Now that you know how easy it is to move to OrCAD PCB Designer, are you ready to learn more about the
exciting OrCAD features and technologies which will help you improve your design productivity? Here are
some resources you can leverage to learn more about OrCAD technologies.

Whats New in OrCAD

Want to know what are the new features in the latest OrCAD release? Check out whats new.

Customer Testimonials
See how real companies are leveraging OrCAD to bring their products to market on time and on budget.
View OrCAD customer stories.

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Product Information
Need more videos, app notes, datasheets to dive deeper into the OrCAD technologies? View OrCAD
product pages.

Ready to Talk?
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you like to talk with our channel partners? Contact us now!

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