Free electronics simulation software

"Carl" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...

Hello Carl,

You forgot to mention that it is only licensed for students or have I wrongly understood their license agreement?

Best regards, Helmut

Newsbeitragnews: snipped-for-privacy@n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...

Hi Helmut,

As I understand it, they are taking a very liberal approach to the term "student". If you are using it at home or in the office for your own purposes (ie self-study) it is no problem to download it.

Carl

"Carl" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@b75g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...

Hello Carl, the text below is the original text from their webpage. It's very restrictive. They not only insist on on beeing a student, they also want the name of your teacher. I wonder what you have read there. Maybe my English is too bad to understand that. :-)

Best regards, Helmut

--
The student version of CircuitLogix electronics lab simulation is available 
free of charge to any student studying electronics through an educational 
institution. This edition of CircuitLogix was created especially to provide 
students with free access to one of the best resources available for 
learning electronics.

They also specifically disallow schools to deploy it, e.g., network wide!

With their current restrictions, I can't see anyone who *knows* about, e.g., LTSpice, actually using their product.

Hi Joel,

LTSpice is pretty good for analog simulation, but CircuitLogix provides both analog and digital simulation.

Carl

Carl wrote: : LTSpice is pretty good for analog simulation, but CircuitLogix : provides both analog and digital simulation.

Boy! It looks like a "pile on Carl" thread! Somewhat deserved, too, since he's obviously a shill for CircuitL*gix.

LTSpice does some digital simulation also, much more than normal SPICE. I'll let the champions of LTSpice elaborate on this point.

My question about CircuitL*gix is: what type of digitial simulation? Can it read Verilog or VHDL netlists and do so-simulation with SPICE netlists? Or does it just have a few "digial" circuit elements ("and", "or", "not", a DFF, and a counter or two)? If it's the latter, then it does about the same thing as LTSpice (or less). Nothing to get excited about.

If it's the former (i.e. Verilog/VHDL), then is that available in the freebie student edition?

And what about handling Verilog-AMS? There are so many free SPICE simulators out there nowadays (both open and closed source) that CircuitL*gix seems like a "me too" product about 5 years late to the party unless it can handle Verilog-AMS, or do something similarly novel.

Stuart

Hi guys,

Well, I give up. Accusing me of being a shill for CircuitLogix is too much. To answer your question, Stuart, yes it does do co-simulation with SPICE and it can read VHDL.

Carl

p.s. I am a design engineer with Motorola and I also work as an adjunct professor at Texas A&M. I could care less about whether you download a free version of CircuitLogix, I was more interested in sharing some good news about free simulation. Obviously, I shouldn't have bothered.

: Well, I give up. Accusing me of being a shill for CircuitLogix is too : much.

Well, no offense intended. Sorry!

: p.s. I am a design engineer with Motorola and I also work as an : adjunct professor at Texas A&M.

Bully for you!

: I could care less about whether you : download a free version of CircuitLogix, I was more interested in : sharing some good news about free simulation. Obviously, I shouldn't : have bothered.

We are leery of folks posting "look at this great new free tool" messages here since free tools from commerical vendors usually have strings attached [1]. The classic examples are ExpressPCB, which offers free design/layout software, but locks you into a proprietary output file format usable only at ExpressPCB; and Eagle, whose free version is wildly popular with students, but is essentially crippled since it limits you to two layers and a fairly small board area. Once you bump up against the limits of the freebie Eagle, you've got to pay for the full-up version [2].

FWIW, there are lots of freebie and open-source simulators of various flavors out there, including:

LTSpice -- closed source SPICE with integrated schematic capture. Totally rocks!

ngspice -- open source SPICE 3f5. Still uses a CLI, and not as optimized as LTSpice, but it works.

GnuCap -- Analog simulator with internal engine a generation or two ahead of regular SPICE. Open source. Can do event-driven simulation as well as continuous time. Still uses CLI, and can read SPICE netlists (with some caveats).

QUCS -- A spiffy new GUI-based simulation environment which claims to do all kinds of simulation. Open source. Incorporates schematic capture front end. I believe they have some work to do until it's complete.

Icarus Verilog -- Excellent Verilog open-source simulator run from the command line. Used with GTKWave for waveform viewing, it's a powerful tool for Verilog design.

Alliance VHDL -- French university project providing a chip design tool suite. Includes VHDL simulator. I've never used it so I know very little about it.

TkGate -- GUI based logic simulator. More of an eductional tool than a professional design tool, but it's cool nonetheless. Open-source.

PSpice -- Years ago PSpice 6.x from MicroSim was downloadable off the web for free. Is it still around?

Tina -- TI's simulation program. Version 7 is a free download. Is it some kind of "me too" response to LTSpice? I haven't used it.

Besides these, there's also MyHDL, PyHDL, FreeHDL, regular Spice3f5, and plenty of other free simulators out there available on the web. And don't get me started on schematic capture, layout tools, or chip design editors!

You can follow the open-source EDA tool space here:

As you can see, CircuitL*gix is just another entrant into a very crowded market space. Maybe it's got some better features than some other tool? But from your initial postings it didn't make it seem so. Also, commercial giveaways are always to be regarded with suspicion. And we're a very cynical group in any event.

Cheers,

Stuart

[1] LTSpice being a notable exception, probably because they make their money from chips, not from software. [2] Nothing wrong with that, since the freebie tool is a loss leader. But anybody using it should think twice about the long-term dangers of vendor lock-in before they have too many designs done in such a tool. Same for CircuitL*gix, I would imagine.

One assumes Carl meant **could NOT care less**.

Stuart Brors>We are leery of folks posting

Yup. Astroturfing abounds.

Yup: Lock-in-ware

True--but, in the year 2007, you have glossed over the biggie: Cadsoft's DRM (Lock-OUT-ware)

--and their recently-implemented treat-'em-all-like-thieves attitude (even for fully-paid customers): 8-(

**The Downside of EAGLE** by Markus Zingg *-*-website+reuse+paying.*+*-I-will-switch+cracked-*+*.would.not.help.*+zzz+after-*-*-version-*+copied+*.*.unlock.*.designs+*-*-*-*-exchange-*-*-*-*-third-party+reused+qq+*-*-single-bit-*-*-*-*+useless+*-*-*-projects-could-no-longer-be-openednews: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com

Unless they have very specific needs, I'd suggest it's not really in the best interest of your students to steer them towards CircuitLogix rather than LTSpice. A reasonably sophisticated sernior project could readily exceed the circuit size limits of the free version of CircuitLogix. Additionally, LTSpice is *very* well supported -- for free! -- on the Yahoo! groups; the program's author still posts regularly. Just looking at the web site itself, it's clear that they want to *sell students* the "full educational version." Of course, there's nothing wrong with trying to make a buck, it's just again that CircuitLogix doesn't appear to offer $249 worth of "added value" over all the freeware solutions out there.

TINA is commerical SPICE package (out of Budapest!) that TI licensed from DesignSoft. TI's response to LTSpice has primarily been to provide a fuller-featured version of TINA (for free) than they previously had.

Hey Carl,

Thanks for forwarding the link regarding CircuitLogix. I did the download and it looks very cool. I couldn't find any info about PCB exporting. Do you know if it has that capability?

Kevin

Hey Carl,

Thanks for the link regarding Circuitlogix. I did the download for the free simulator but couldn't find any information about PCB export. Do you know if it has this feature?

Kevin

Kevin,

I downloaded CircuitLogix last night and there is a VHDL function as well as PCB export. Look in the Help file and select "PCB export". I have Multisim

8 (which I paid $600 for and it is garbage). Someone was mentioning LTSpice was better than CircuitLogix, which is quite hilarious. LTSpice looks like it was designed by high school kids. I guess LTSpice is ok if you are designing really simple circuits or if you don't know much about electronics. CIrcuitLogix is the real deal. How they are making money from it is a mystery, since they give it away for free. But I don't care. Free is good.

Jerry

Kev>> There is a free electronics circuit simulator available called

Eagle, LTSpice, and TINA? What is this......Losers anonymous? Those are the three worst simulators that have ever been built. At least LTSpice has the excuse that they are not really a simulation product since they sell hardware. But LTSpice and TINA? Give me a break. Why even post messages when you have no clue about simulation software. Stay in school for a few more years and then get a job and then post messages. Until then you are just taking up valuable space.

Jerry

Stuart Brors>: Well, I give up. Accusing me of being a shill for CircuitLogix is too

snip

Because they sell it for $249 Jerry.

Ian

In one simple sentence, you have successfully proven that you know nothing about simulators.

-Chuck

LTSpice is a slight variation on the spice used by the chip designers at Linear Technology... one of the most highly regarded linear IC manufacturers in the world.

I downloaded the software and my wallet still has the same amount of money as before I did the download, so I don't see how it cost me $249.

I understand that there is a full version for $249 with even more bells and whistles, but what I downloaded for free from the CircuitLogix site is better than what I paid Multisim hundreds of dollars for last year. The free download is great. Don't be a party-pooper, Ian. The best things in life are free.

Jerry

Ian Bell wrote:

That's nice. How's your job at Linear Technologies going. Did they give you a raise for your posting?

Chuck Harris wrote: