Welcome to the OrCAD PCB Editor Training course for Release 17.2-2016

To complete the course, you will need:

a machine running Windows 7 or 10, 64-bit edition

a licensed installation of Cadence SPB / OrCAD 17.2-2016 running the latest hotfix

a license for OrCAD PCB Designer Standard is required, this can be: from an OrCAD PCB Designer Standard, or OrCAD PCB Designer Professional suite; or from an OrCAD Trial

Download the OrCAD PCB Editor training files from here and extract the files from the archive to a local directory, using C:\OrCAD_Training is recommended since this location will match the course instructions.

The hands on sections of the training material assume a “default” environment, if this machine used for the training has any user configuration of the Cadence SPB / OrCAD 17.2-2016 environment, save this before starting any of the hands-on sessions as follows:

Start OrCAD Capture and view the session log to see the location of the “live” Capture.ini file, this will be “something like”:

C:\SPB_Data\cdssetup\OrCAD_Capture\17.2.0\Capture.ini

The section before the “cdssetup” is the “Home” location, C:\SPB_Data\ in this case – but this may be a location in the “Users” folder – make a note of the “Home” location and close Capture. Then start Windows Explorer and navigate to the “Home” location, rename the “cdssetup” folder to “cdssetup-live”. Capture will build a new “cdssetup” folder when it starts again. If you need to interrupt the course and restore the previous settings, rename the “cdssetup” folder to “cdssetup-training” and rename the “cdssetup-live” folder back to “cdssetup”, to continue with the course settings again, rename the “cdssetup” folder to “cdssetup-live” and rename the “cdssetup-training” folder to “cdssetup”. The “pcbenv” folder in the “Home” location will also need to be changed in a similar manner to get the default environment for the hands-on sessions and restore your settings afterwards.

(For details about how to set psmpath and padpath locations, where PCB Editor loads the library parts from, refer to: http://orcad.co.uk/images/PDF/Defining_padpath_psmpath.pdf )

The course labs start with files in the “play” folder for the initial sessions and then move to using files in the “project” folder for the remaining sessions.

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