Electronics Simulation Software

[chessman]

I prefer Proteus over anything else...it's insanely full featured!!!! Unfortunately, it's upwards of a grand!<p>I use CircuitMaker currently....and I can give anyone a copy if they want.....it's the full version along with TraxMaker too

[greg123]

Yes as do I.<p>If anyone would like a copy of Circuit Maker Professional, TraxxMaker, Workbench 5 or Protel let me know. <p>I currently use Circuitmaker Prof.

[dave8976]

Al I noticed in your artiles that you adjusted the power supply in example 1 to have 5000 ohms, is this to represent the the resistance of a typical circuit that would be atatched to this filter or is it to repreent an internal resisitance of a power source. Also I noticed that in order to get the analysis to represent more real life results you add internal resitance to the inductor. In my own experience in running spice programsI have found that I got unexpected results. Most of hte time I relate this to not fullin understanding the operationof the software. Bit part of this may be due to not taking into account the real life nature of teh components. This also may serve that no matter how good the tool the user needs to account for the real life or practical characteristics of components?

[wd5gnr]

The Rser represents the series resistance of the source. It is illustrative to set it to 0 ohms and see what a mess you get on the plot! In real life, a source always has some series resistance and to get the best simulation you have to take everything into account.<p>I wanted to make that example simple, but for a good simulation, I would have put a resistor across L1 to represent the load resistance (even if I wanted to see what a scope would measure -- then I'd use a 10Meg resistor, for example). The capacitor and inductor both have parasitic pieces that you can change in their properties. With a little experience, you learn which of these you can usually ignore. For example, the capacitor has some inductance, but below, say, 30MHz, it probably isn't very important.<p>There are also some cases where simulation parameters can make a big difference. It is good to experiment with some circuits that you are pretty sure you know how they should respond so you can get a good feel for the tool you are using. Then you can start simulating circuits you don't have a clear idea about.

[dave8976]

I came across a very good web site listing all of the available circuit spice tools along with a brief assessment.
http://homepages.which.net/~paul.hills/ ... Spice.html<p>Dave

[rosborne]

ICAPS/4 DEMO by Intusoft is a really nice package for simulation. I used it for an Op-Amp design contest in a class (we lost). Probably had about 90 nodes, but only works with that many wires if you use the hierarchical blocks function.-Rick

[dave8976]

Just to let everyone know I ended up buying the B2Spice A/D version 4 product from Beigebag. I have been impressed with their speed of response to my questiopns as well as the delivery of the product once I ordered it over the internet. Although I am still learning to use the product their documentation is very good as well as the capabilities of their product for the price.
I did receive a number of e-mail responses suggesting other favourites. But for hobby use it more than completes the requirement. Dave