Here is what I know about the two products you reference. Cadence Allegro is a well established, widely used high-end PCB design tool. In 2006 Cadence discontinued distribution of OrCAD Layout (We acquired this code as the basis for our Free SoloPCB Design Software). The product was replaced by a stripped down version of Allegro called OrCAD PCB Designer that could be priced lower and bundled with OrCAD Capture but is technologically compatible with Allegro. In contrast to Cadences’ competitors, chiefly Mentor, Cadence elected to consolidate it’s R&D on one source code base line (Allegro) to leverage economies of scale. The result is that any feature developed for Allegro can be easily deployed in either the high-end offering: Allegro or the mainstream solution: OrCAD PCB Designer without replicating source code develpment. The biggest difference between the two offerings when viewing the entire solution is the front end applications. Allegro is tied in with Cadences IC and FPGA solutions. OrCAD has its own front end, OrCAD Capture which also has support for programables but different from Cadence’s other offerings. Keep in mind that OrCAD Capture and it’s related applications are pretty deep and tend at times to compete with Cadence’s higher priced solutions. Ask me another… 