Circuit simulation software

mc,

Linear Technology Corporation's LT-Spice, (aka SwitcherCADIII), a free download from

And there's a superb users' group, at

Regards,

Tom Gootee

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The Multisim people are, well, not perfectly ethical. LT Spice is excellent and free.

John

There is a free limited version of Tina on the Texas Instruments website

Paul E. Schoen

LTSpice

- YD.

Thanks; I'll try that. I'm also trying the OrCAD demo edition, which seems to be powerful but an order of magnitude harder to get started with than Multisim.

"mc" wrote in news:IUFbg.22372$ snipped-for-privacy@bignews6.bellsouth.net:

You might also want to look at Spectrum Software's MicroCap 8. The demo has no time limit and handles up to 50 nodes. This is more than enough for most SPICE analysis work. MicroCap is much easier to learn and to use than other programs, and has far better graphical analysis. This is where you really need their advanced features and ease of use in order to see what your circuit is doing.

It pays to take your time evaluating as many different SPICE programs as possible. After you get started and have several months or years of working analysis files on your hard disk, you may find it difficult to switch to another program.

You can download MC8 for free. Just give them an email address and they will send you the download location. Here's the url:

Regards,

Mike Monett

Many thanks!

And there is always gEDA:

Getting anything usefull from a simulator is usually much harder than building the circuit and mearuring its performance.

Interesting. You must have some very expensive test gear then. For the rest of us, simulation is a good tool.

Ian

Are you saying that you never build the circuits you design? Or if you do then you dont test them to ensure they work the same as the simulation? The reality is that you still need to build and you still need the test gear even if you simulate first, so it saves you nothing.

Once you've gone through the learning curve, it can save you the time of unbuilding circuits that you've built but don't do what you want them to do. :-)

Cheers! Rich

Simetrix from Catena:

You realize you just cut out everyone doing IC design there, right? I think it's a safe statement that no one designs, e.g., an IC op-amp and *doesn't* perform circuit simulation first.

I second Slavek's suggestion to check out SI-Metrix from Catena; it's a beautiful piece of work.

---Joel Kolstad

looks interesting but, strangely, from their pricing page

"Note that we cannot accept cash under any circumstances."

Must be the Talban Effect

martin

It wouldn't be the first English company I've encountered where it seems like they don't *really* want to sell you anything and it takes significant effort before you're "allowed" to do so! :-)

SI-Metrix used to be its own little company (Newbury Technology) before Catena acquired it and raised the prices. However, John Warner is still at the helm of SI-Metrix, and as long as that's the case I think it'll conitnue to be a good product (unlike, say, PSpice which has stagnated at best under Cadence's ownership).

---Joel

well, I don't know who this originated from or by how so..

Oh dear...

You've not designed an analogue ic with 10,000 transistors have you?

Ho hum...Its not unusual for complex, high transistor count designs to work first time.

How do you propose to do worst case corners or Monty Carlo to verify that your rats nest custom tweaked, one off circuit actually works with component variations?

You simply can not design analogue i.c.s without extensive simulation. Ideally, bench work is kept to a bare minimum. Typically, analogue ics are so well designed using only simulation that bench work often consists of simply verifying a few bits and bobs and making the data sheet. This is way it is.

Kevin Aylward B.Sc. snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

"There are none more ignorant and useless,than they that seek answers on their knees, with their eyes closed"

"martin griffith" a écrit dans le message de news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Or the Talbin effect.

Talbin is a French slang word for banknote.

Well of course that is one of the unusual cases, indeed spice was developed specifiaclly for that purpose. Chip makers, as a rule, don't come online looking for the cheapest simulator around, so I think we can safely say the OP isn't in that catagory.