Circuit simulator software needed

[Suraj143]

Can somebody name some freeware circuit simulators. Which can see the circuit is working or not, the output waveform etc…..

Thankx a lot.

 

[Roff]

Several of us here use SwitcherCAD III from Linear Technology. The learning curve may be a little steep if you have no experience with Spice.

 

[Optikon]

Can somebody name some freeware circuit simulators. Which can see the circuit is working or not, the output waveform etc…..

Thankx a lot.

The simulator can't tell you if your circuit is working or not. That's up to you to decide. All the simulator does is solve the complicated equations and make a nice interface.

You also did not state what kinds of simulations you need to run. Not all simulators have the same features & analysis types available. The free ones tend to be more limited (but useful nonetheless)

 

[gramo]

The simulator can't tell you if your circuit is working or not.

ISIS can

 

[Hero999]

What's ISIS?

In fact not all simulators have a nice user interface, pure SPICE doesn't, you eneter your circuit as code.

You also need to know quite a bit about electronics before even touching simulation software.

 

[gramo]

Not really, have a look at some vid-sims I've done for ISIS

**broken link removed**

They are the Proteus part 1 and 2 tutorials, nothing special, but a great heads up on how to use it

 

[Sceadwian]

Hero, I learned more from actually using simulator software than I knew before I used it (ltspice)

 

[AllVol]

freeware circuit simulators.

I've downloaded and tried just about all the demo simulators, and found SwitcherCad III to be the front-runner. But, like someone else said, you have to be able to correctly interpret the results.

It's nice to test an idea, or try out someone else's theory, though.

Still, the breadboard provides the more reliable information. Simulators just refuse to pop and smoke.

From what I'm seeing, and speaking as a relative newcomer, too many of our newbies are relying on the sim to learn.

 

[FRIED]

Simetrix is worth a look. Easy for a beginner to use, some nice features. Free version limited.
I like the ability of SWcadiii and
**broken link removed**

 

[Ambient]

Still, the breadboard provides the more reliable information. Simulators just refuse to pop and smoke..

Actually Multisim 9 will smoke parts if you use the rated ones. It can cause a lot of frustration when you don't realize that you used a rated resistor on accident and it blows. Took me an hour to figure out what was wrong, as I did not expect it to do that lol.

 

[Hero999]

I used to use Crocadile Clips at school and it used to do that the most annoying thig was there was no way to change the power ratings and it didn't take things into account like safe operating area. I hope Multisim 9 is more intelligent, I hope an LED rated at 20mA won't blow if it's pulsed at 40mA 1kHz 50% duty cycle.

 

[Sceadwian]

I don't know of any simulators that take safe operating area and power rateing into acount, the simulations aren't accurate enough, it's up to the user to make sure of those things, it's usually fairly easy though as you can determine the current or power going through any part of the circuit.

 

[jbelectric777]

Sura, I am a novice and found crocodile 3D technology very useful, only thing is it's for a trial period only but you can really put together circuits fast and learn a lot. (faster than a breadboard anyway) it has all sorts of components and IC's and if you want you can buy it. (not cheap) they also have a crocodile elementary free download which is the basic of basics. I also found a program on e~bay for about $ 7.00 (U.S) I was'nt too impressed but it did'nt look too bad. I went back to my breadboard because I learn more and faster when I make mistakes and have to rebuild the whole project or hit your pocket book when you destroy a component/s (like I have , LOL)
I guess the best sim is the breadboard (we call it OJT in the electrical biz, on the job training ) and mostly the experts are right here in this forum just a click away, they know their stuff. Good Luck... jb

 

[Sceadwian]

You really can't beat LTSpice, it's not the fastest spice simulator out there, but it's complete and free, it also has the added advantage that it can both input and output multi channel wave file data. It's definitely not real time but you can feed an audio signal into a circuit input and output any node (even an equation) as a .wav file and analyze it to your hearts content. Never experimented with the maximum sample rate it will let you use. But it at least does 96khz audio. The learning curve is a little higher than a prettified simulator but it's usefulness is significantly higher too.

 

[Optikon]

You really can't beat LTSpice, it's not the fastest spice simulator out there, but it's complete and free, it also has the added advantage that it can both input and output multi channel wave file data. It's definitely not real time but you can feed an audio signal into a circuit input and output any node (even an equation) as a .wav file and analyze it to your hearts content. Never experimented with the maximum sample rate it will let you use. But it at least does 96khz audio. The learning curve is a little higher than a prettified simulator but it's usefulness is significantly higher too.

Sample rate and time are not at all limited to the simulator being used. All of these simulators under discussion have a PSPICE engine running that is mostly the same for all of them. Time in the simulators is only limited by the accuracy of your PC doing the calculations it has nothing to do with max sample rate etc..

LTspice is a good freeware simulator that works well for most designs.
Here are some things it doesnt do well:

1) Doesnt have all analysis options. i.e. cannot do an AC sensitivity analysis or pole-zero plot. Not a big deal but some simulators do these.

2) Is not the most user friendly in terms of creating new schematic symbols.

3) built in library models (all linear-tech created) have some incompatibilities with other spice simulators. I'm not talking PSPICE versus SPICE versus ISPICE here.. I am talking about things that are _UNIQUE_ to LTSPICE. Thats just bad coding practice.

We can't complain too much because it is free and linear tech is not in the business of making spice software. But I have some projects that I simulate where LTSPICE runs out of gas and have had to resort to other tools.

 

[Hero999]

One of the things that would be handy in LTSpice would be calculation of RMS currents, voltages and power dissipation.

One good thing Linear could do is open source their software so others could help develop and improve it.

 

[Roff]

One of the things that would be handy in LTSpice would be calculation of RMS currents, voltages and power dissipation.

YOu can do all that. Go to Help and look at Waveform Arithmetic.

 

[Hero999]

Cool.

This waste of space is because the crappy forum software doesn't allow one word replies.

 

[Sceadwian]

If you go to the Yahoo Groups LTspice group you can download speaker models. If you have a good set of monitor quality headphones you can listen to a raw waveform, and then see what's going to happen when you send that same signal through the speaker, without ever having to build an enclosure.

 

[Roff]

If you go to the Yahoo Groups LTspice group you can download speaker models. If you have a good set of monitor quality headphones you can listen to a raw waveform, and then see what's going to happen when you send that same signal through the speaker, without ever having to build an enclosure.

Although it ain't gonna be exactly hi-fi.