jmb4370

I followed a link from this forum to these software titles, and am looking for feedback from anyone who has used any of these, or any other circuit simulation (and PCB) software that might be better, or less costly?

"Circuit Wizard" , "LiveWire", "PCB Wizard 3", "TINA Electronics Software"

It appears that "Circuit Wizard" might be a combination of the "Live Wire" and the "PCB Wizard 3", and all of the titles are offered in Hobbyist, Professional, and Educational versions.

Any input at all I am sure would help many of the newbees like myself, and make all the other questions we ask much more meaningful

Michael

Hero999

There's Microcap, Crocadile Technology (which is for children and is a bit Micky Mouse) and Multisim, but LTSpice is the only one as far as I'm concerned.

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Roff

Likewise for me.

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Ron

Limanima

Is LTSpice free?
From were can I download it?

Roff

Do you know about Google?

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Ron

denikar

ICAP/4 by Intusoft is another one, though not inexpensive.
http://www.intusoft.com/

spuffock

Build a prototype. I have seen amplifiers with rail to rail squarewave hum ouput, 500Mhz switch mode supplies, and DC radio transmitters, all of which worked perfectly on simulation.
Consider that the software (sometimes) runs under windows as well.
Buy the cheapest, get free if you can, and only believe it if it says it wont work.

adaminc

I second spuffock in saying that prototyping is better, most simulators work under ideal conditions, when you get to the real thing, sometimes strange things happen that the simulator didnt simulate, like noise.

Some of the new more expensive simulators like MultiSim are getting better at simulating non-ideal components though.

But alas, prototyping can get expensive, so I recommend a suite like Proteus with the ISIS Simulator, simply because it supported simulating quite a few different PIC Microcontrollers, so I could write code and simulate. Which is handy. It also has the ARES PCB design software.

quixotron

Yes. Try Hercules 5000 or TaoISIM by National Instruments.

crutschow

Certainly prototyping is needed to prove that the circuit works, but simulation is great in the initial design phase as it can catch many design errors and readily allows you to modify the design. The simulation is only as good as the models, of course, and that is often the limitation. I used Electronic Workbench to design and simulate a switching power supply, including optimizing the feedback compensation network, and the only significant simulation deviation was because I had the wrong capacitance for the zener diode model. I'm quite sure if I hadn't simulated the circuit first, I would have had to do many iterations on the prototype to get it to work properly. And since the prototype was done on a pcb (it's very difficult to breadboard a high frequency switcher and get it to work properly using discrete wiring), that would have been painful and expensive.

Another circuit I recently designed and simulated (but haven't built yet) is a circuit to mute my home audio system when the phone rings or when the phone is off the hook. The somewhat tricky part was, I wanted it to operate off the telephone power, no external power to be used. It took me many simulations and iterations to get the circuit to work properly over the wide tolerance of the telephone voltages. And I now have good confidence that it will work properly when I do built it.

I would never build even the most simple of circuits, without simulating it first.

Sceadwian

LTSpice all the way, completly free and very useable, the learning curve is a little harsh, but not bad if you stick with it and play around.

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Papabravo

LTSpice is the winner hands down. It has an active Yahoo user group with some very smart people there and a ton of examples.

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DigiTan

I use a Spice program from Cadence Software called OrCAD 9.2. Trouble is, it's a Lite Edition--the only free edition I know of to date--and it imposes a very restrictive node limit.

If LTSpice has a large library, I might look into it.

If it's PCB software, I use EAGLE. It has an autorouter.

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