Electrical Circuit Software

[johnfin-disable]

Is there a good graphical/numeric electrical circuit design program similar to the mathcad layout? I have tried Circuit Shop and it's junk.

[Luc_Meekes-disa]

Johnfin,

Pspice used to be very good. They'd have free evaluation copies for you to try out small circuits (up to one page, about 50 elements).
Search the web and you may find it as "evaluation" version for either "pspice" or "the design center".

Good luck!
Luc

[rrandall]

On 8/24/2006 4:04:07 PM, johnfin wrote:
>Is there a good
>graphical/numeric electrical
>circuit design program similar
>to the mathcad layout? I have
>tried Circuit Shop and it's
>junk.

Intusoft also has a demo program that allows 20 parts. http://www.intusoft.com/demos.htm

[ptc-1214470]

I have used LTSpice, free from Linear Technologies, available at http://www.linear.com/designtools/softwareRegistration.jsp

It works well for most reasonable size circuits...
Jim S.

[LouP]

Microcap is another commercial product by Spectrum-soft that has a free eval version. This works for approx. 50 elements, and allows you to save files (very handy), which a number of eval versions do not allow. I have used it for filter design and simple active circuit models. A fair number of features are active in the eval version. I have a low SW pain threshold, and this application was not too bad to learn the basics and be useful.

http://www.spectrum-soft.com/index.shtm

Lou

[efiguy]

Hi,

I searched a few years ago and bought a package (Tina) from Designsoft. It was true spice based and works well. I just checked and they have a new V7 product that includes VHDL (I had to buy that extra)

http://www.designsoftware.com/
http://www.dsmm.net/English/demos/demo_tina.php

Regards,
efiguy

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

LInear Technologies also has SwitcherCad, which is a spice-based circuit drafting tool freeware.
I haven't used it enough to say how useful it is.

Fred Kohlhepp
fkohlhepp@sikorsky.com

[ptc-1307023]

Another interesting piece of software is "Sapwin" (cirlab.det.unifi.it/sapwin/). It takes a schematic and creates a symbolic expression for a transfer function which can then be manipulated in mathcad. See attached article.




Kevin Spahr
kevin.spahr@mpcproducts.com
Electronics Design Engineering Manager
PH: 847-673-2718 x316
FAX: 847-673-9789

MPC Products Corporation
AS9100 & ISO9001:2000 Certified
Skokie, IL USA

[LarryLederer-di]

On 8/24/2006 4:04:07 PM, johnfin wrote:
>Is there a good
>graphical/numeric electrical
>circuit design program similar
>to the mathcad layout? I have
>tried Circuit Shop and it's
>junk.

Have you looked at VisSim. A limited version was packaged with Mathcad 11 (I believe) It allowed you to create discrete and analog circuits using both passive and active elements. You could then select your input wave forms and run simulations.
And you could link it to Mathcad for analysis.