--- title: OrCAD Capture Reviews meta_title: 'OrCAD Capture Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 34 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how OrCAD Capture works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.2 review_count: 34 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-07' parent_category: name: CAD url: https://www.g2.com/categories/cad --- # OrCAD Capture Reviews **Vendor:** OrCAD **Category:** [PCB Design Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/pcb-design) **Average Rating:** 4.2/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 34 ## About OrCAD Capture OrCAD Capture is a schematic design solution widely utilized by electronic design engineers and technicians for creating and documenting electrical circuits. It offers a comprehensive environment for schematic entry, facilitating the design of complex circuits with efficiency and precision. Key Features and Functionality: - Hierarchical Design Support: Enables the creation of complex designs through hierarchical structures, promoting modularity and ease of management. - Variant Design Capabilities: Allows for the development of multiple design variants within a single project, streamlining the process of accommodating different requirements. - Extensive Component Library: Provides access to a vast library of schematic symbols and components, including discretes, FPGAs, operational amplifiers, and microcontrollers, enhancing design flexibility. - Component Information System (CIS) Integration: Facilitates seamless integration with company component databases, ensuring the use of preferred and current parts, thereby accelerating the design process and reducing project costs. - Bi-Directional PCB Integration: Offers seamless integration with PCB design tools, enabling data synchronization and cross-probing between schematic and board designs, ensuring consistency and reducing errors. - Simulation Integration: Supports integration with simulation tools like PSpice, allowing for early analysis and verification of circuit behavior directly within the schematic environment. Primary Value and User Solutions: OrCAD Capture streamlines the schematic design process by providing a user-friendly interface combined with powerful features that enhance productivity and accuracy. Its integration with component databases and simulation tools ensures that designs are both efficient and reliable. By supporting hierarchical and variant designs, it accommodates complex projects and multiple design requirements, reducing time-to-market and development costs. The extensive component library and seamless PCB integration further simplify the design workflow, making OrCAD Capture an essential tool for modern electronic design. ## OrCAD Capture Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users find OrCAD Capture to be very **intuitive** , making it easy to work with existing schematics. (1 reviews) ## OrCAD Capture Reviews ### 1. Orcad capture review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2025 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** It is a very intuitive program to use and allows cut and paste from my existing schematics which is handy. The install process was quite tedious reqiring dongle installation but there are other methods of licensing I believe, like node locking. **What do you dislike about OrCAD Capture?** I haven't found any bad features about the program **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** It allows me to enter my schematic into CAD format for conversion to a PCB that can be manufactured. ### 2. Good software to get the job done, However, There are newer software packages that are better **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Josh L. | Electrical Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 27, 2023 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** Orcad is capable of getting all your PCB and system-level schematics done. **What do you dislike about OrCAD Capture?** Orcad is a capable software. However, it is old and not intuitive. I know many more senior engineers that use OrCad for many applications without issues; however, there are better solutions that have come out over the past decade. **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** We used OrCAD for PCB design, layout, routing, and system-level schematic capture. It worked, but it was not intuitive and did not interface with our 3D design software as well as we would have liked. ### 3. Orcad capture is a very good tool specially for schematic design. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Udit A. | Team Leader-PCB Design, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2021 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** Orcad capture is a very nice tool for schematic design, entry, library creation including all logic symbols & it's management, assigning attributes, BOM generation & export etc. **What do you dislike about OrCAD Capture?** The earlier versions of Layout tool was not that much user friendly and advanced but the latest version seems to be have very nice and advanced features starting from placement to routing to release. **Recommendations to others considering OrCAD Capture:** If you are in electronics sector and looking for a tool where you want to start your new design and it's development, Orcad capture is good enough for schematic design & it's other packages like simulation, pcb design etc are good enough for complete product development solution. **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** Schematic design and simulation is very very good in orcad, it is simple, user friendly and has many advanced features for any kind of circuitry. Any kind of simulation can be performed in its simulation tool which gives designer a breif idea of how the circuit will perform before going for proto development. ### 4. User Unfriendly but powerful tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Semiconductors | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2020 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** It does it job very quickly and doesn't get stuck. Importing old schematic to new tool might need some learning curve or help from support team. It does nice job in making large hetro symbol and organizing it. **What do you dislike about OrCAD Capture?** Very hard to find some of the regular action like zoom, nets, bus. It is not integrating well with other database. Support team is less efficient then Mentor tool support team. They can really improve in integration like Digi key and mouser website import. They have this feature but it is not working well or I would say hard to find it. MySQL database integration can be improved as well. Mentor tool DxDesigner has auto save feature which is most useful. You don't have to worry about loosing your work while in OrCAD, you have to remember every time you stand up from your work or lock your computer. It happens sometimes that application get crashed if you lock your laptop because your license can get disconnected from server. **Recommendations to others considering OrCAD Capture:** Compare orcad vs altium vs dx designer for your need and then make decision to buy it. **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is helping to make large hierarchical schematic design. ### 5. Even after training I found it a bit difficult to use **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Carsten Bach L. | PCB Design Lead, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2021 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** It has a lot of features, some more useful than others, but that seems to the same for their competitors. The Danish distributor made a great effort with additional menus. Made a bit easier to use it and not forget anything. Just follow the order in the menus, and all is there **What do you dislike about OrCAD Capture?** Some features were difficult to find, and some could be found in different ways. Not so consistent. Have a feeling Cadence is doing what big costumers ask them to. That's why several functions can be entered in different ways. True or not? Don't know **Recommendations to others considering OrCAD Capture:** Found it very time consuming to get started, but if your organisation is big enough you might be able to support each other. When I used it we were only two **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** Didn't solve problems as such. Just did my work with the sw present in the company ### 6. Orcad capture is good when you have bigger schematic design_still need some improvement. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vitthal D. | Hardware Design Engineer, Design, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2019 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** The most helpful thing about orcad is, its user friendly GUI and adaptability with the others schematics. Even you can simulate with cadence simulator easily. **What do you dislike about OrCAD Capture?** 1) The capture and layout design should be all together as like Altium Designer. They should provide more libraries for free of cost. 2) while exporting output documents, they should come in proper formats like excel. 3) when it comes to connecting bigger schematic the dots and grids resolution is not good. **Recommendations to others considering OrCAD Capture:** If you use orcad capture to draw schematic only at your company and outsource your PCB design from other vendors then orcad capture is the best and cheapest. But when you want to do both Schematic and PCB design at your own office then Altium is combined and best, but is too expensive. while Orcad is cost effective. **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** When it comes to bigger schematic designs, it is really helpful to draw schematic in orcad. The cost effectiveness, or we can save some money by using orcad rather than other. ### 7. Easy to use for schematic capture **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 21, 2019 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** One major thing that separates OrCAD from the lower end CAD packages is the PSpice add-ons that allow full circuit simulation. It does have quite a learning curve but if you have it at your disposal, it can save you a ton of time and frustration on some of the more advanced mixed signal designs. There are even entire courses in college focused on just learning how to use this one feature. **What do you dislike about OrCAD Capture?** One drawback of OrCAD is how it splits up every feature into standalone applications. Each feature has its own program; nothing is integrated. This is a little annoying and you’ll find yourself toggling between several windows when developing 1 board. **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** Its 3D rendering isn’t the greatest (compared to Altium), but it works. OrCAD is very powerful and an industry standard, but it’s just a little outdated in our opinion. ### 8. Ease in orcad capture. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Leviel A. | PCB Designer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2019 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** At first youll be confused if you are currently using EAGLE software but if you know the process itself youll be getting with orcad along the way. And Ill find it easy as well to use. **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** Some voltage error. exporting netlist, editing object properties are I think the key advantage of orcad capture since youll see the circuit in a tabular form where you can sort and find the components you arr checking. ### 9. Powerful software if you know what you’re doing **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 13, 2019 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** The best part about OrCAD was analyzing yours circuits before implementing them in the real world. It’s nice to know something won’t work before you buy components **What do you dislike about OrCAD Capture?** I find OrCAD to not be a very intuitive software. Once I learned how to use it by teachers and tutorials, I was much more effective but it’s hard to learn on your own. **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using OrCAD for schematics and circuit analysis. It allows me to realize simple mistakes before I go and build circuits ### 10. Very useful circuit simulation tool **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nicolas S. | RF Test Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2019 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** A whole world of electronics components interconenexion and behaviour simulation faithful to reality. **What do you dislike about OrCAD Capture?** Not really a big problem but sometimes simulation is not in accordance with real results, which is normal for any simulation tool. **Recommendations to others considering OrCAD Capture:** It is a very powerful application. **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** Pre-study and analysis of all types of electronics circuits at university, prior to purchase of circuit components. Money saving due to the ability of simulating final behaviour. ### 11. Circuit simulation **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2019 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** Very precise circuit simulation, high fidelity. The component libraries are really great as well. Strong support of advanced circuit analysis tools like Monte Carlo. Fast simulations. **What do you dislike about OrCAD Capture?** I never really liked the UI of the older versions. Some settings are quite hidden. **Recommendations to others considering OrCAD Capture:** If the program tells you there is an error, there is an error indeed. The fundementals of the software are very good and solid. **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** I mostly used it for circuit simulation. I really made good use of the broad variety of components, especially through the strong support of Texas Instruments spice models. ### 12. Generally good to use but some operations are not smooth **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2019 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** Easy to reuse old designs as template, most of the new components library can be found on communities like SnapEDA **What do you dislike about OrCAD Capture?** Alignment of components when connecting wires **Recommendations to others considering OrCAD Capture:** Great tool to use **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use OrCAD for circuit schematic capture for all the projects ### 13. Quick,easy to learn and efficient tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in E-Learning | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 19, 2019 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** During Vlsi projects I used it.I like that it doesn’t need a prior knowledge and would take few hours to learn and adapt to tool **What do you dislike about OrCAD Capture?** It’s not flexible enough to draw a circuit **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** It made it easier to create a circuit and quickly run it with different inputs ### 14. It was very good experience with orcad capture schematic & layout **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Design | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2019 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** Smooth routing in layout is the best features of orcad PCB editor, FSP of FPGA is one of the best feature **What do you dislike about OrCAD Capture?** It is need to design user friendly. Their are given different window eg for padstack,footprint creation all is need to create in one window **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** Finding single ended net, drc correction ### 15. senior hardware engineer **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Industrial Automation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 01, 2019 **What do you like best about OrCAD Capture?** net label is obvious, easy to use, hard to make mistake **What do you dislike about OrCAD Capture?** design-rule-check is not powerful, may mislead engineer to make mistake **What problems is OrCAD Capture solving and how is that benefiting you?** schematic design making simple and direct, it supports complex work. ## OrCAD Capture Discussions - [What is OrCAD Capture used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-orcad-capture-used-for) - 1 comment - [How do you simulate in OrCAD capture?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-do-you-simulate-in-orcad-capture) - 1 comment - [How long does OrCAD free trial last?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-long-does-orcad-free-trial-last) - 1 comment - [What is the difference between OrCAD and pspice?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-the-difference-between-orcad-and-pspice) - 1 comment - [How much does OrCAD capture cost?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-much-does-orcad-capture-cost) - 1 comment - [View OrCAD Capture pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/orcad-capture/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=4§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-13+19%3A07%3A56+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=93c013d5-14b2-4e48-b445-11e23b11fec1&secure%5Btoken%5D=632ad487c4cd00a8a34f28046231624401516d83037f3aa19a1e3430dd761a3f&format=llm_user) ## OrCAD Capture Features **Design** - PCB layout editing - Schematic editor **Tools** - 3D modeling tools - Component placement **Library** - Component libraries **Platform** - Board size - Layers **Customization** - Custom commands - Custom interface ## Top OrCAD Capture Alternatives - [Altium Develop](https://www.g2.com/products/altium-develop/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (1,031 reviews) - [Autodesk EAGLE](https://www.g2.com/products/autodesk-eagle/reviews) - 4.0/5.0 (76 reviews) - [KiCad EDA](https://www.g2.com/products/kicad-eda/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (64 reviews)