Comments on: help finding software

Question: help finding software

larry_darrell — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:44:44 -0800

Looking for electronics simulation software.

Don't need advanced engineering features. Just want to learn on my own. Up to $1,000 would be in my budget.

By: garlic

garlic — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:00:46 -0800

Spice or pspice were the standards we used in undergrad electrical engineering for analog models. This page offers some free versions.

Matlab can do some electrical simulations as well as a ton of other things.

The xilinx provided webpack is a free digital design and simulation tool. It may also be possible to get a demo version of Modelsim.

By: TheOnlyCoolTim

TheOnlyCoolTim — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:19:35 -0800

What exactly do you want to simulate?

From just "electronics," you probably want SPICE. There's about 8 million versions of it, some free, some expensive - we had HSPICE & I think PSPICE in school.

The thing is SPICE by itself takes in an annoying-to-create text file and spits out an unreadable text file. If you're connecting more than a few transistors together you'll want a GUI to make the "netlist" input file and you'll want another GUI to show you graphs and results.

Try searching "SPICE GUI," some free stuff seems to come up.

By: neuron

neuron — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:30:55 -0800

http://babbage.cs.qc.edu/courses/cs343/Circuit_Maker/

By: RichardP

RichardP — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:36:15 -0800

Do you have an OS requirement (Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Solaris, etc.)? Do you want to simulate digital circuits, analog circuits, or both? Do you also need RF simulation?

In any case, this older AskMe has some information about circuit simulators, including SPICE, etc.

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:12:17 -0800

For learning purposes the free versions of pspice will suffice. Even more fun is building the circuits.

By: fake

fake — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:33:26 -0800

I highly recommend SwitcherCAD. It is incredible.