You seem to be in the same predicament as many in this metamorphic phase
of PCB design software. Why not simply keep that old PC to maintain the
old stuff? The amount of modifications shall only diminish with time to
the old designs. We have, at LXE been doing our designs in P-CAD for as
long as the old-timers can recall and decided to go to PowerPCB 18
months ago. We still must keep P-CAD active, but we do no new designs on
P-CAD, nor do we pay for maintenance any more, having stopped at REV 8.5
(which works fine). I know this does not take away the pain and
frustration, but the up side to this clip of the apron strings to the
past is the increase of cool stuff that PADS can do. Having talked to
the Tech Support folks at PADS, they said that the full forward and
backward compatibility to the old products was seriously holding back
the amount of workstation-like features that they could implement.
Intelligent split planes was the foremost issue to me and was, as he
explained, only possible with the departure from the past tools. Having
been a P-CAD user, I have lived with non-intelligent split planes for
too long already, especially in the light of Accel's P-CAD replacement
product having always offered the capability to produce an intelligent
negative split plane. The increase in productivity once we got
proficient is well worth the pain of transition to us and I thank my
leadership for taking the plunge and choosing PADS PowerPCB. It's a
great tool which continues to improve and the Tech Support staff beat
any other I have dealt with in response time, ability to help me
overcome a problem and receptivity to improvement/ enhancement changes.
While we are on the subject, has anyone found any bugs in 2.0 yet?
Chris Taylor
Senior Printed Circuit Designer
LXE, Inc.
125 Technology Parkway
Norcross, GA 30092
voice: (770) 447-4224 X3242
fax: (770) 447-6928
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
>----------
>From: DeVita, Mike[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Thursday, October 16, 1997 1:53 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: [DESIGNERCOUNCIL] PADS PowerPCB
>
>A QUESTION DIRECTED TO OTHER PADS USERS
>
>We recently received the latest release of PADS PowerPCB version 2.0.
>
>Included with the release is an ALERT notice concerning Perform/Work
>software. In the notice PADS states that software releases that reside
>on PCs that run at clock speeds greater than 90MHz will no longer be
>supported.
>
>Unfortunately for us we have dozens of dozens of designs that were
>created in PADS 2000 and Perform that we will no longer be able to ECO
>unless we keep/buy a PC that runs slower than 90MHz. Also you cannot
>bring a PADS 2000 file directly to PowerPCB, you first must use
>Perform/Work as a translator, then bring the design into PowerPCB.
>
>My question, as directed to other PADS users, what work around do you
>use to update older designs into PowerPCB?
>
>All of our older files were saved in PADS binary format so we cannot use
>the ASCII utility in PowerPCB to bring them up to PowerPCB 2.0.
>
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