Electronic circuit simulator

LTspice or Pspice...

LTSpice, available free from Linear Technology at is kind of the lingua franca around here. The active devices are, ahh, heavily weighted to LT's product line but it's still a pretty popular choice. There are commercial offerings but this is the place to start.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

People often trade LTSpice files on s.e.design and s.e.basics. LTSpice generates text files. So LTSPice would be good if you like usenet, which is text-based; you can trade schematics with people.

"Ivan Vegvary"

** You had just the theory down - or the actual thing?? ** Errr - why ??

** Only interested in learning about stupid simulators - right ?

Wot a wanker.

.... Phil

Hey Archie...how long since that horse kicked you in the head?

mike

P.S. Don't mind Phil A. He actually has insightful and helpful answers when he's in the mood but can be gratuitously insulting at other times.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

There's the help, the LTspice Users Guide and the LTspice Getting Started Guide at:

and the excellent user group at:

You'll need to join the group (free) at:

and get a Yahoo! ID (free) at:

Additionally, there's lots of stuff at:

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JF

Thanks! Rich

Already got the yahoo ID, thanks! :-)

Cheers! Rich

These guys have a free simulator download

On the plus side it has a large selection of components ready to use. On the negative side it has a limit to number of components you can use on the free version and it does not seem to be as accurate as LTC Spice

why don't you down load LTspice? it's free ?

And Besides, if that website is any indication of the fullness of their program, it most likely does not have much to offer..

Jamie

Take a look at Qucs, the Quite Universal Circuit Simulator. It was written originally under Linux then ported over MacOSX and Windows.

It just quick and no fuss if you just want to lash something together

Yeah Qucs is worth looking at. I find LTSpice to be just a bit better though, and happily LTSpice runs fine in Linux using wine.

Yes, LTSpice seems to be a good tool. I just started using it last week and spent a few hours playing around with the examples and moving stuff around, adding and deleting components, and looking at oscillator waveforms. Pretty neat program, and it saves the schematic in text format, easy to post or email.

But, one thing I couldn't figure out is how to rotate a component (say a resistor) to a vertical or horizontal position. I ended up just duplicating a resistor already on the schematic in the right orientation and changing the value. Another problem was locating a JFET transistor in the components list.

What is the easy way to rotate parts and find a JFET transistor?

Thanks,

-Bill

To rotate a part, press R before placement, or "grab" an existing component with one of the "hand" tools and then R.

JFETs : Component pull-down menu, njf or pjf

...

ctrl-R to rotate, ctrl-E to mirror

type the keys: F2 N J F ENTER Substitute 'P' for 'N' to use P-channel parts

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?? 100% natural

I had exactly the same problem. I had to do a web search to find out. First, select the component, then before placing it, use the rotate function on the menu bar or the text equivalent. My next hurdle was placing the proper simulation command in the work area. It takes a while.

mike

Yes, there's a lot to learn. I have no idea what I'm doing. I just used the existing simulation command from one of the examples, for .tran 20m startup to look at a wien bridge oscillator. I managed to get the thing to start running after some delay and then stop. I've never seen an oscillator that starts up and puts out a few good cycles and then stops. Maybe some error in the simulation command.

-Bill