Custom colors setup

Some electronics engineers prefer to use non-standard colors for their IDE’s.
Staring on bright screen whole day, from morning to evening definitely not healthy,
so here’s quick tutorial how to setup black background colors in Cadence OrCAD Capture schematics editor.

Manual setup

You can proceed with manual adjustment for all colors via Options/Preferences.

Using previously saved configuration file

Or much faster way is to use already existing configuration.
Capture stores all it’s settings in INI file named Cadence.ini.

Colors are saved in that INI configuration as well. Since it’s a normal formatted text, we can easily see color settings and their RGB values.

[Default Colors]
Off-Page Connector Text=RGB(255, 0, 255), TRUE
Pin=RGB(255, 0, 0), TRUE
Part Body=RGB(117, 166, 115), TRUE
NetGroup Block=RGB(255, 128, 0), TRUE
DRC Marker=RGB(0, 128, 0), FALSE
Part Reference=RGB(255, 255, 0), TRUE
Comment Text=RGB(128, 128, 192), TRUE
Hierarchical Port=RGB(255, 0, 0), TRUE
Part Value=RGB(128, 255, 0), TRUE
Pin Number=RGB(187, 187, 0), TRUE
DNI Part=RGB(128, 128, 128), TRUE
Variant Part=RGB(0, 128, 0), TRUE
Grid=RGB(136, 136, 136), FALSE
Hierarchical Block Port=RGB(0, 128, 64), TRUE
Wire=RGB(135, 160, 159), TRUE
Hierarchical Block=RGB(0, 128, 0), TRUE
Title Block=RGB(141, 153, 102), TRUE
Locked Object=RGB(129, 159, 182), TRUE
Power Text=RGB(255, 255, 0), TRUE
Display Property=RGB(255, 128, 0), TRUE
Part Body Rectangle=RGB(64, 128, 128), TRUE
NetGroup Bus=RGB(0, 128, 192), TRUE
Connection Square=RGB(128, 128, 128), FALSE
Off-Page Connector=RGB(255, 0, 128), TRUE
Alias=RGB(255, 0, 0), TRUE
Bookmark=RGB(0, 128, 0), FALSE
Bus=RGB(0, 0, 255), TRUE
Selection=RGB(255, 255, 255), FALSE
Background=RGB(20, 20, 20), FALSE
Hierarchical Port Text=RGB(0, 255, 0), TRUE
No Connect=RGB(128, 64, 0), TRUE
Title Text=RGB(128, 0, 255), TRUE
Junction=RGB(128, 128, 64), TRUE
Comment Graphics=RGB(128, 128, 255), TRUE
NetGroup Pin=RGB(128, 0, 64), TRUE
Hierarchical Block Name=RGB(128, 64, 0), TRUE
Pin Name=RGB(192, 192, 192), TRUE
Power=RGB(255, 128, 0), TRUE

INI-file stored in Cadence home directory, which is setup when IDE was installed.
You can check your home directory setting by running Control Panel\System\Advanced system settings\Environment Variables…\User variables\HOME

I used Cadence OrCAD Capture version 16.6.0 so in this case absolute path for INI-file was next:

c:\Cad_data\cdssetup\OrCAD_Capture\16.6.0\Capture.ini

You can download configuration file with colors depicted above by clicking here