Optikon
New Member
Over the past several months I have been "evaluating" various Spice-based circuit simulators. Much to my amazement, these days there are plenty of companies offering spice solutions whether it be rolled up in their EDA software or stand alone.
I am after a spice solution that meets:
1) Easy new model creation / Library management
2) Full gamut of sim types. Monte carlo, noise etc...
3) Don't care if it is true mixed mode (analog + digital)
4) NOT a student version of anything that is node crippled or similar.
5) can import most popular formats.
6) NOT bundled with software that is thousands of USD. EDA type.
I have checked out:
* ICAP/4
* Cadence bundled
* CircuitMaker 2000 bundled
* Protel 2004 bundled
* Superspice
* Visual Spice
* Orcad Pspice
Generally, all of these are very good with drawbacks that are easily worked around. In particular, I am very impressed with visual spice but the interfaces are almost too much to handle (too much information & settings which is a love/hate relationship) but the advanced version sits in a nice couple hundred USD range for standalone version.
While creating new models might be easy, I am particularly impressed with versions that come with thousands of vendor models already built in. This saves alot of time and effort.
I have not tried Multi-sim's bunded version but like I said, I am looking to spend less than $1000 USD.
Any others that you have tried that have a high performance/price ratio??
I am after a spice solution that meets:
1) Easy new model creation / Library management
2) Full gamut of sim types. Monte carlo, noise etc...
3) Don't care if it is true mixed mode (analog + digital)
4) NOT a student version of anything that is node crippled or similar.
5) can import most popular formats.
6) NOT bundled with software that is thousands of USD. EDA type.
I have checked out:
* ICAP/4
* Cadence bundled
* CircuitMaker 2000 bundled
* Protel 2004 bundled
* Superspice
* Visual Spice
* Orcad Pspice
Generally, all of these are very good with drawbacks that are easily worked around. In particular, I am very impressed with visual spice but the interfaces are almost too much to handle (too much information & settings which is a love/hate relationship) but the advanced version sits in a nice couple hundred USD range for standalone version.
While creating new models might be easy, I am particularly impressed with versions that come with thousands of vendor models already built in. This saves alot of time and effort.
I have not tried Multi-sim's bunded version but like I said, I am looking to spend less than $1000 USD.
Any others that you have tried that have a high performance/price ratio??