Interactive Installations

Learn how to do the interactive installation of products using the Cadence® Allegro® X and OrCAD® X installer.

Installing the Products

You can use the Cadence Allegro® X and OrCAD® X installer to install products in two modes: interactive and unattended. The interactive mode uses an installation wizard to guide you through the installation steps. The unattended mode lets you edit a template in the installation CD and run the installation process without intervention.

You can also run the installer to maintain installed products. Maintenance allows you to modify or repair the current installation.

You can remove the installation from the Programs and Features tool of the Windows Control Panel by clicking the Uninstall button.

Although you can install the Cadence products without administrative privileges using the Only for me option, you must run the System Configuration Utility with administrative privileges after completing the installation to be able to use the installed products.

This section describes:

• Performing Interactive Product Installation
• Performing Maintenance Installation
• Uninstalling the Products

Performing Interactive Product Installation

By default, all OrCAD X and Allegro X products are installed by the installer. You can choose to install only a selected set of products or install the Allegro Pulse Server.

1. Browse and double-click the Setup launcher file (setup.exe).
   This file is located above the Disk1 folder in the root if you have a CD or in the folder where you extracted the ZIP for a downloaded media.
2. Click Install for OrCAD X and Allegro X Products Installation.
3. Read and accept the license agreement and click Next.
4. Under Install this application, choose the option to restrict access to only your login or allow all users access to the installed products. Choose Only for me (Recommended), the default, to allow access only to the current user installing the applications or if you do not have administrative privileges. Select Anyone who uses this computer (All Users) for all users of the computer to access the installed applications.
5. Change the Installation Directory if needed by browsing to the directory where you want to install the products.
   If you are installing in per-user mode (Only for me) and there are other installations in the system, ensure that you specify a unique location to not overwrite other existing installations.
6. Specify the Working Directory, set the path for your default working directory, or accept the default directory.
   • If you have already set the HOME environment variable, that is what appears as the default directory in this dialog box. If you have not previously set a HOME variable, then the default is %APPDATA%\SPB_Data for per-user installation (Only for me) and C:\SPB_Data for an all-user installation. You must specify the working directory you want to use. After the installation is finished, the HOME environment variable equals the working directory you specify.

   If a working directory is already specified in your system, retain the working directory value if you do not want to change existing configurations. Changing this value will alter the value of the HOME variable, which might affect other applications that use this variable, and existing configurations for the tools might become ineffective.

   Avoid changing the HOME environment variable as it might impact other programs.
7. Select Allegro X Products with Pulse Server if you want to install a Pulse Server.
8. Click Custom Installation to select specific features for installation. By default, all products will be installed.
1. If you have received a control file from Cadence, specify the file location. The features available in the control file will be selected for installation.
2. Verify and make changes to the list of features selected.
3. Click Next.
4. Verify the footprint library path.
5. Click Next.
9. Verify the options in the Installation Settings page and click Next.
   The Only for me option, selected by default, allows access only to the current user who is installing the applications. Select Anyone who uses this computer (All Users) for all users of the computer to access the installed applications.
   If you are installing in per-user mode (Only for me) and there are other installations in the system, ensure that you specify a unique location to not overwrite other existing installations.

   Avoid long path names, spaces, and special characters in the installation path.

10. Verify the options in the Input License Details page and click Install.
    Connect to Existing License Server is selected, and Port Number and Host Name are populated by default if the installer detects an existing license. Selecting Install License Server will install and configure a Cadence License Server.
    • If the installer does not detect an existing license, the Install License Server option is selected and you have to specify the path of the license file received from Cadence. If you have multiple license servers and you want to access all of them, you can specify the port and host information for each of the license servers delimited by a semi-colon (;) as follows:

    port1@host1;port1@host2;port1@host3

    For example:
    5280@sunny;5280@blue;5280@sky

    If your license server has a fault-tolerant server configuration, you can specify the port and host information for each server separated by a comma as follows:
    port@host1,port@host2,port@host3

    For example:
    5280@sunny,5280@blue,5280@sky

    You can get the license path information from the Cadence license file. The license path is specified by the SERVER keyword in the following form:

    SERVER <host_name> <license text> <port_number>
    For example, in the line SERVER corporatelicenseserver 83065c2 5280, corporatelicenseserver is the host name and 5280 is the port number.

    • If you edit the License Path box, ensure that the value is correct because the new value will overwrite the original CDS_LIC_FILE value.

    The 24.1 installer also installs Microsoft® Visual C++® Redistributable 2019 Package. Depending on the products selected and the operating system used, the installer might also install SAP® Crystal Reports® runtime engine for .NET Framework (64-bit) version 13.0.11.1467, .NET Framework 4.5, and SQLite® ODBC Driver for Win64.

    Select Activate OnCloud License if you have registered and received an OnCloud license and plan to use only products that use OnCloud license. If you plan to use a mix of products, some of which need a License Server, you must have access to a License Server.

    If you select Activate OnCloud License, log in using the registered user ID.

11. Click Finish in the Setup Complete page.

    You can select to install third-party tools right away or install them at a later stage.

    The installation might take several minutes. You can access the installed products from the Start menu by choosing from any one of the following:

    1. Cadence Help 24.1
    2. Cadence IC Packaging 24.1
    3. Cadence PCB 24.1
    4. Cadence PCB Utilities 24.1
    The product installer installs a subset of documents. However, you can access the latest documents anytime if you have a net connection. To be able to access documents when not Online, install the documents locally using the Documentation Installer available on the Windows tab of the Cadence Downloads page for OrCAD X/Allegro X 24.1 (SPB241). To access the Cadence downloads link, you must have an active Cadence license.

    The Licensed Products Not Installed dialog box appears if a product listed in the control file is a license only (no software) product. The Installer detects if any locked files (.EXE, .DLL) are found. If so, the Restart Windows dialog box appears reminding you to reboot the system.

    The shortcuts will be added to the All Users profile only if installation is performed for all users. This means that if installation is performed for a single user, other users logging into the system will not be able to view the shortcuts from the Start menu. Users can configure an installation to make it accessible from their user ID.
    • If you have an earlier release installed in your system, you can remove the Cadence paths from the PATH variable. The Release 24.1 products do not need any paths to be set.

    If you installed without administrative privileges, configure the installation with administrative rights.

    To be able to use Allegro X Pulse, the Pulse Server administrator must deploy and configure Pulse by running the setup files in <installation_location>tools\ecw\SchemaSetup directory. Also, the Allegro X Pulse server must have Microsoft 2012 Redistributable Packages for 32- and 64-bit installed.

Performing Maintenance Installation

You can perform maintenance of an installed hierarchy to incrementally add new products and to repair an existing installation. In the repair mode, the installer reinstalls all program features installed in the system.

1. Click on setup.exe in the top-level of the Windows DVD images (above the Disk 1 folder).
2. Click Modify/Repair.
3. Select one of the following depending on your requirements:

• Modify: To add new features
• Repair: To reinstall all program features installed in the system
• Remove: To remove all installed features

• If you select Remove and click Next, the wizard will start immediately, and the installation will be removed.

Modifying an Installation

If you select Modify and click Modify, the Control File Location page appears. Perform the following steps to add or remove features:

1. Specify the path to the control file you received from Cadence, including the name of the control file. The control file determines which products are selected by default in the Select Products dialog box.
   If you do not have a control file, leave it blank.
   The products selected during the previous installation are selected by default. You can:
   • Select new products to install incrementally
     or
   • run the installation without changing any selection to repair an installed hierarchy
2. Click Next.

   If you are installing Allegro X Design Authoring CIS or OrCAD X Capture CIS, the Footprint Viewer Option page appears. Verify that the footprint library path is correct.

3. Click Next.
4. Verify that the license details are correct and click Install.
5. Click Finish in the Setup Complete page.
   Any new product that you installed added to the shortcut menus.

Repairing an Installation

If you selected Repair and then clicked Repair, click Install to repair the installation.

The installer reinstalls all installed features and adds any files missing from the hierarchy.

Removing an Installation

If you select Remove and then click Uninstall, the wizard will start, and the installation will be removed from your system.

Uninstalling the Products

1. Open Programs and Features from the Control Panel of Windows.
   Cadence Allegro X and OrCAD X products will appear in Programs and Features for all users only if installed using the allusers option. If installed using the Only for me, it will appear only for the login ID used for installation.
2. Select Cadence OrCAD X and Allegro X 24.1 from the list of currently installed programs.
3. Click Uninstall to launch the installation wizard.
   The wizard prepares to remove the installation and then displays a message asking if you want to completely remove the selected application and all its product.
4. Click Yes to uninstall the products.
5. Click Finish in the Uninstall Complete page.

• If you perform a series of installations, removing installations, and reinstallations, you run the risk of corrupting the CDS_LIC_FILE environment variable on the file server or on the remote client computer. If this variable is corrupted, you may be unable to run any products that are still installed. For example, if you had a previous Cadence release installed then installed and uninstalled a new release, you may be unable to run any products from the previous Cadence release. Once the CDS_LIC_FILE environment variable is corrupted, the only remedy is to manually edit the environment variable and reset its value to reflect the license server information in the form of <port_number>@<host_name>. For example, the value of the CDS_LIC_FILE environment variable for a single license server might be:

CDS_LIC_FILE = 5280@pc1
and for redundant license servers, it might be:
CDS_LIC_FILE = 5280@pc1;5280@pc2;5280@pc3

• You can also use the License Client Configuration Utility to update the CDS_LIC_FILE variable.
• You can similarly uninstall the Cadence SPB Manufacturing Option 24.1 from Programs and Features of Windows Control Panel.