Altium Designer Documentation
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New Feature Summaries
Altium Designer 15.1 - New Feature Summaries
OrCAD 16.x Import Support
This document is no longer available beyond version 15.1. Information can now be found here: Importing a Design from OrCAD for version 25
Altium Designer supports the importing of a wide range of files from other design software packages, including OrCAD® Capture™ schematics and libraries. With this new release of Altium Designer, its importer and translator now supports the 16.x version of OrCAD design files (*.dsn).
Design files from other tools are imported and translated to the Altium Design project structure using the Import Wizard, where ‘OrCAD Designs and Library files’ can be selected in the Importer’s file type page. The wizard guides you through the import process and provides a range of intuitive translation configuration choices along the way.
The Import Wizard will translate OrCAD 16.x design schematics and library files into Altium Designer Schematic (*.SchDoc) and Schematic Library (*.SchLib) documents respectively. The translated files are grouped within an Altium Designer PCB project (*.PrjPcb), and stored in an associated Imported xxx folder, where xxx represents the source OrCAD design file name.
The Import Wizard provides a range of useful translation configuration choices during the process that define how the imported design files are interpreted. The image
illustrates an Imported OrCAD® design file for the TI AM335x EVM board, courtesy of Texas Instruments®.
The success or otherwise of the import process can be viewed from the compiler listing in the Messages panel, which provides an interactive listing of the error, warning and status messages produced during the import.
The Messages panel will automatically open following the design import process – error and warning messages can be interactively viewed in the workspace.