P-CAD
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Electronic design automation software |
| Founded | 1982 |
| Founder | Richard Nedbal, Roy Prasad |
| Headquarters | California , United States |
| Products | P-CAD electronic design automation software |
P-CAD was the trademark of Personal CAD Systems, Inc., a California-based company specializing in electronic design automation (EDA) software tailored for personal computers. The firm was eventually acquired by ACCEL Technologies, which itself was bought by Altium in 2000. The software's final edition was released in 2006 before being discontinued in favor of Altium Designer.
History
Personal CAD Systems was established in 1982 by Richard Nedbal and Roy Prasad, both former executives at American Microsystems, Inc. (AMI). The founding group also comprised Gregory Houston, who served as vice president of marketing and had previous experience at Calma, along with Chi-Song Horng, initially the director of software engineering and later promoted to vice president.
Following the introduction of the IBM PC, P-CAD focused on the growing personal computer market with the goal of challenging the costly $250,000 mainframe-based CAD systems by providing electronic CAD solutions priced below $10,000. Early financing included $500,000 from CrossPoint Venture Partners and an additional $3 million from New Enterprise Associates and Robertson, Coleman and Stephens.
By 1988, P-CAD had amassed a user base exceeding 10,000, outpacing competitors such as Autotrol, Calma, and Mentor. Its core offerings consisted of schematic capture, logic simulation, and PCB layout capabilities. Texas Instruments stood out as its largest client. In 1989, P-CAD was acquired by Cadam, a Lockheed subsidiary undergoing a sale to IBM at that time. At the point of acquisition, P-CAD's user count had grown beyond 100,000.
Subsequently, the company was sold to ACCEL Technologies based in San Diego. P-CAD became part of ACCEL’s acquisition by Protel International Pty Ltd (currently known as Altium) in 2000. The product lineup included schematic capture, component library management, PCB layout and routing tools, parametric constraint solving, and automatic routing functions.
The final version released was P-CAD 2006 with Service Pack 2. Following this release, Altium discontinued the product to concentrate efforts on Altium Designer.