On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 1:51 PM, Isaac Marino Bavaresco <
isaacbavaresco@yahoo.com.br> wrote:

> On 08/09/2014 06:46, Mike Harrison wrote:
> > On Mon, 8 Sep 2014 12:43:46 +0530, you wrote:
> >
> >>> t may not be doable/practical, but I just thought I'd throw this out
> >>> there.  Before Altium went to 'Altium', there was PCAD. Quite a few
> people
> >>> didn't switch, and still use PCAD.  Altium seems to pretend it never
> >>> existed.  I don't know how or if you could get a legal license, but i=
t
> is
> >>> perfectly usable.  We've done boards over 20 layers with it, 28 in
> >>> diameter,  blind /buried, ...
> >>>
> >> Is/was that the same as Protel.
> >> Clunky, steam driven, works.
> >>
> > No - P-CAD started life as Accel, and Altium (then Protel) bought it bu=
t
> kept the 2 packages running
> > for a while before abandoning PCAD. It was designed from scratch to use
> Windows conventions, so has
> > no baggage inherited from old DOS packages,
>
>
> P-CAD indeed inherits some of its user interface from old Tango Pro for
> DOS. It even has a Tango Pro compatibility mode, where the keyboard
> shortcuts try to mimic or approximate Tango Pro's behavior. It can
> convert Tango's libraries and even comes with a lot o Tango's libraries
> already converted.
>
> P-CAD has some quirks, but it is perfectly usable for large/complex
> boards even today, eight years after its last update.
> In Windows 7 some list selectors inside dialogs (most notably the layer
> list in the layer management dialog) don't show their contents and make
> it hard to use (although not impossible). In Windows XP it works perfectl=
y.
>
>
> Yes P-CAD as well Tango are known names. Tango for DOS had a very good
autorouter (compared for example with Orcad which gives a mess) and very
simple rules for routing.

However, with respect I want to remember you all, that a good PCB engineer
will probably never use 20 layers for the most complex design ever made...

Keeping thing simple is the key for everything.

best,
Vasile
--=20
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