Altium, OrCAD maybe sth other?

[MichalK]

Hi!
I'm young engineer who designed a dozen PCB's with some uC like STM32 ect., but now I'd like to develop my skills and I want to design PCB which are able to work up to 20 Gb (I'm talking about digital and analog signals).
So my first question is: Which software do you recommend for High Speed Digital and Analog Signals? I know Altium but I'm not sure that it's able to give me special tools for simulation and analysis. Maybe it's better to use some other software like: OrCAD, pads, or PathWave?
What do you think guys?

[Paul van Avesaath]

I have done up to 25 Ghz in Altium... its a diff line..so speeds..well its just a number.. 12Ghz on a single ended line is a bit more tricky..

just getting all the design aspect correct is more challening (cut outs at the correct locations.. transparent via design, stuff like that).. getting all the calculations done correctly and implementing it..

Altium is a great tool... but not for simulation.. you need hyeprlynx for that.. or simbeor, but thats a whole other level of SW.
currently working in Mentor graphics and maybe its my enviroment but man.. I miss altium.. it is so much more logical than mentor...

I know robert has done a sidestep to Orcad.. so maybe he can give his view on it..

so to answer your quesions:
software -> altium
simulation -> hyperlynx (export from altium works fine)

[robertferanec]

I agree with Paul van Avesaath.

PS: For complex boards also Allegro is good - it has better constrains manager than Altium (they have better ways to set all the kind of rules - even rules which are not possible to set in Altium e.g. relative length matching, branch segment length matching etc). However Allegro is not as intuitive to use as Altium.

PSS: I would not go for Mentor - long time ago I used PADS and I did not like it much. They may be now better, but when I talked to them about making some videos on youtube they were extremely secretive and worried about free tutorials on youtube - so I am not sure how difficult it is to find free "how to" videos for mentor - if you decide to go for mentor, first double check how good support they have on internet to find answers if you are stuck. But I may be wrong - maybe they have great support on internet.

[Paul van Avesaath]

I agree with Paul van Avesaath.

PSS: I would not go for Mentor - long time ago I used PADS and I did not like it much. They may be now better, but when I talked to them about making some videos on youtube they were extremely secretive and worried about free tutorials on youtube - so I am not sure how difficult it is to find free "how to" videos for mentor - if you decide to go for mentor, first double check how good support they have on internet to find answers if you are stuck. But I may be wrong - maybe they have great support on internet.

the support is there but the tool is just crappy IMHO