P-CAD was the brand name of Personal CAD Systems, Inc., a California based manufacturer of

electronic design automation Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing Electronics, electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools wo ...

software. It manufactured a CAD software available for personal computers. The company was divested into ACCEL Technologies which was purchased by

Altium Altium Limited is an Australian multinational software company that provides electronic design automation software to engineers who design printed circuit boards. Founded as Protel Systems Pty Ltd in Australia in 1985, the company has regional ...

in 2000. The last release of the software was in 2006 before it was retired in favor of the

Altium Designer Altium Designer (AD) is a PCB and electronic design automation software package for printed circuit boards. It is developed by Australian software company Altium Limited. History Altium Designer was originally launched in 2005 by Altium, ...

product.

History

Personal CAD Systems was founded in 1982 by Richard Nedbal and Roy Prasad. Both were former executives of American Microsystems, Inc. (AMI), a custom semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California. Also, part of the founding team were Gregory Houston, VP Marketing, a former Calma executive, and Chi-Song Horng, Director of software engineering (later promoted as a Vice President), a former AMI software engineering manager. P-CAD was a play on personal computers, which were just becoming popular, following the launch of the IBM PC. The vision of the company was to disrupt the existing hegemony of $250,000 CAD systems based on mainframe computers and custom workstations, and make electronic CAD available to the masses at a cost under $10,000. The company originally raised

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

500,000 from CrossPoint Venture Partners, and US$3,000,000 in a second round from

New Enterprise Associates New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American-based venture capital firm. NEA focuses investment stages ranging from seed stage through growth stage across an array of industry sectors. With ~$25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of the w ...

and Robertson, Coleman and Stephens. P-CAD went on to become the company with the biggest installed base of users of

Electronic Design Automation Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing Electronics, electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools wo ...

(EDA), with over 10,000 users by 1988. At that time, P-CAD was the most prolific EDA company as measured by its user base, easily surpassing established CAD companies such as Autotrol,

Calma Calma Company, based in Sunnyvale, California, was, between 1965 and 1988, a vendor of digitizers and minicomputer-based graphics systems targeted at the cartographic and electronic, mechanical and architectural design markets. In the electroni ...

Intergraph Intergraph Corporation was an American software development and services company, which now forms part of Hexagon AB. It provides enterprise engineering and geospatially powered software to businesses, governments, and organizations around the w ...

, Daisy, Mentor, Cadnetix, CAE Systems, ECAD, SDA Systems, etc. At that time, Cadence was just being formed with the merger of ECAD and SGA, and

Synopsys Synopsys is an American electronic design automation (EDA) company that focuses on silicon design and verification, silicon intellectual property and software security and quality. Products include tools for logic synthesis and physical design ...

was being founded as a new start up. P-CAD's flagship products included

schematic capture Schematic capture or schematic entry is a step in the design cycle of electronic design automation (EDA) at which the electronic diagram, or electronic schematic of the designed electronic circuit is created by a designer. This is done interactiv ...

logic simulation Logic simulation is the use of simulation software to predict the behavior of digital circuits and hardware description languages. Simulation can be performed at varying degrees of physical abstraction, such as at the transistor level, gate lev ...

and

PCB PCB may refer to: Science and technology * Polychlorinated biphenyl, an organic chlorine compound, now recognized as an environmental toxin and classified as a persistent organic pollutant * Printed circuit board, a board used in electronics * ...

layout. Its single biggest customer was

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...

. In 1989, P-CAD was acquired by

Cadam CADAM (computer-augmented design and manufacturing) is CAD-related software that was developed by Lockheed. CADAM was originally written for IBM mainframes and later ported to UNIX workstations, including the IBM RT PC. A variant of CADAM call ...

, which was a subsidiary of Lockheed, but was in the process of being sold to IBM. At the time of acquisition, P-CAD had an installed base of over 100,000 end users, a record at that time. A few years later, the P-CAD group was divested by selling to

ACCEL Technologies Altium Limited is an Australian multinational software company that provides electronic design automation software to engineers who design printed circuit boards. Founded as Protel Systems Pty Ltd in Australia in 1985, the company has regional ...

, an EDA software corporation from

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

, California, which was acquired by

Protel International Pty Ltd Altium Limited is an Australian multinational software company that provides electronic design automation software to engineers who design printed circuit boards. Founded as Protel Systems Pty Ltd in Australia in 1985, the company has regional ...

(now

) in 2000. The P-CAD product included schematic capture, component library management, PCB layout and routing, parametric constraint solver and auto-routing capability. The last version of P-CAD was P-CAD 2006 with Service Pack 2, released in 2006. This was the last release made by Altium, who retired the product in favor of

References

External links

P-CAD Legacy Program
{{DEFAULTSORT:P-Cad Electronic design automation software

History

See also

References

External links