Spice

Out of all the simulation programs out there is Spice the tops and easy to
use over it old Dos days, or is there other programs like Electronic
workbench worth looking at. Is there others worth looking at besides the
limited working free ones out there. What do you like.

 

Most simulation programs are Spice based.

EWB is expensive crap. LT Spice is free and not at all limited.

John

 

http://www.linear.com/designtools/softwareRegistration.jsp

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LTspice/

 

Well, all those touting LTSpice, I might as well tout mine
http://www.anasoft.co.uk

Kevin Aylward

http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

 

John said

Yet another option for personal use:
http://orcad.com/downloads.aspx

 

I started with EWB back at version 5.12 When they renamed it Multisim, I
upgraded and then disgarded the program. I have EWB on a computer only
because I have alot of files in the EWB format.

I moved to TINA [ http://www.tina.com ] because of it's educational
interface. I like the ease of operation for the newbies to spice
simulations and the ease of changing the graphs.

I am looking at Kevin Aylward's superspice now. It looks pretty good. The
faults I find with it are mine ... due to lack of experience with the
program.

I did find one thing odd, but interesting when doing simulations. Build a
simple resonant circuit ... 100 uH, 1 nF, and 1 ohm. Do an AC analysis. Of
course the resonance is 15.9 MHz. Then change the 1 nF to 100pF. Spice
thinks the new resonance is about 50 MHz. It happens in both tina and
superspice. Odd, but interesting.

 

"Of course" ???

Did you screw up during typing? Better go back and look again ;-)

...Jim Thompson

 

Yeah Jim, I screwed up on the typing. It was a 100 nH coil with a 1 nF cap
and a 1 ohm resistor. Then when I changed the 1 nF cap to a 100pF, I got a
little over 50 MHz as the resonance. I must of had milli on the mind ...
lol.

I did think it was odd ... the resonance not moving from 15.9MHz to 159 MHz,
like I expected ....

 

The resonance is proportional to the sqrt of the capacitance

 

Agreed. I got to clear my head before doing some things .... like thinking.
Or maybe I shouldn't think when I'm not use to it.

 

Note if you build a hierarchical set of schematics, you can actually get
30 * 25 = 750 real components in the demo version.

Kevin Aylward

http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.