ALTIUM vs OrCAD

Support for multi-board systems and assemblies Supported in Altium Designer Not Available in OrCAD

Realistic layer stacks employ 3D field solver for accurate impedances Supported in Altium Designer Not Available in OrCAD

Built-in fabrication and assembly drawing generation tools Supported in Altium Designer Requires additional program

Quickly generate ECOs, reports, and documentation Supported in Altium Designer Not Available in OrCAD

Component management; BOM creation features with real-time supply chain data Supported in Altium Designer Not Available in OrCAD

100% backwards compatible with files from all previous releases Supported in Altium Designer Not Available in OrCAD

100% forwards compatible with future product releases Supported in Altium Designer Not Available in OrCAD

Software updates Supported in Altium Designer Last Release October 2020

Collaborate with mechanical teams with the MCAD CoDesigner extension Supported in Altium Designer Not Available in OrCAD

Board Size 100 in. by 100 in. 40 in. by 30 in.

Schematic Sheets Unlimited 999

Signal and Plane Layers 32 signal + 16 plane + unlimited mechanical 200 layers total, license level limits the size of your board and layer count

Unified design environment with all features in a single program Supported in Altium Designer Not Available in OrCAD

Ideal for new designers Supported in Altium Designer Not Available in OrCAD

Job Offerings per Glassdoor Nov. 2021 395 Jobs 96 Jobs

Average Base Pay of Users per Glassdoor Nov. 2021 $64,307 per year($40k - $104k) Not enough data

Ideal for enterprises that need collaboration and integration Supported in Altium Designer Not Available in OrCAD

OS X Yosemite (10.10.x) Not Available in Altium Designer Not Available in OrCAD

El Capitan (10.11.x) Not Available in Altium Designer Not Available in OrCAD

MacOS Sierra (10.12) Not Available in Altium Designer Not Available in OrCAD

Linux Not Available in Altium Designer *64 bit version requires libc.so.6 with subversion GLIBC_2.14 or higher

CPU Intel® Core™ i5 processor or equivalent Intel® Core™ i7 4.30 GHz or AMD Ryzen™ 7 4.30 GHz with at least 4 cores

RAM 4 GB RAM 16 GB RAM

Video Memory 3 GB DDR4/DDR5 Video Memory Dedicated graphics card supporting OpenGL, minimum 2GB

Disk Memory 12 GB disk space recommended 50GB disk space

Screen Resolution Minimum 1600x1200 Minimum 1920 × 1200

Other Excel required for BOM, Access required for DbLibs Linux users: 64 bit version requires libc.so.6 with subversion GLIBC_2.14 or higher

Price Starting at $325 / month

Multiple annual subscription levels for different features:

OrCAD Capture: $580

OrCAD PCB Designer Standard: $995

OrCAD PCB Designer Pro: $2,300

PSpice Designer: $2,400

PSpice Designer Plus: $4,800