Author Topic: Free circuit simulator ?  (Read 11185 times)

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Offline Ian.M

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Re: Free circuit simulator ?
« Reply #50 on: April 02, 2019, 03:09:37 pm »
"I would find it very annoying to have to move the cursor away from where I am working,"

So would I, that's why I put the tool bar at the bottom, you can move it almost anywhere, even on top of the schematic.
That's why I use a five button mouse with most schematic commands bound to its buttons as I described back in reply #21.   Remembering R L C D for passives and diodes,  G for Ground and T for text isn't exactly arduous. 

The toolbar is a crutch.  Print out a function key legend strip as an aide-memoir for their more obscure commands (or dive into the menu to look up the other keys as you need them) and even a novice can turn off the toolbar and still 'drive' it faster.
 

Offline rstofer

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Re: Free circuit simulator ?
« Reply #51 on: April 02, 2019, 03:38:24 pm »
Tools → control panel → operation → toolbar icon size
Thanks for that!  Yuge works well.
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: Free circuit simulator ?
« Reply #52 on: April 02, 2019, 10:42:02 pm »
Tools → control panel → operation → toolbar icon size
Thanks for that!  Yuge works well.
Good. There are lots of options like that tucked away in various dialogue boxes.
 

Offline bson

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Re: Free circuit simulator ?
« Reply #53 on: April 02, 2019, 11:41:33 pm »
I've switched mostly from LTspice to ngspice via KiCad.  It's a fairly capable simulator that makes things like Monte-Carlo analysis straightforward as it's fully scriptable, but the UI is limited so some of this stuff needs to be plotted via python as the UI can't discover script-generated plots, much less several hundred of them and render them as a heat graph.  Python can read spice plot data directly and matplotlib makes creating quality plots a breeze.  (Though in some ways it's a bit lacking, like it can't flag individual events on a graph, or highlight a gated region, or annotate the graphs themselves with computed values.)

But there's no doubt there'a a learning curve here.  But the ngspice manual isn't bad and should be very accessible to anyone with a technical bent who has spent a significant time around computers, programming, configuring sendmail, building Linux kernels, etc.
« Last Edit: April 02, 2019, 11:44:53 pm by bson »
 
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Offline Gyro

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Re: Free circuit simulator ?
« Reply #54 on: April 03, 2019, 09:00:14 am »
What? Nobody's tried TI's offering apart from me?  :-\  One thing it does offer is most of TIs (NS) linear parts directly accessible rather than needing to find and import models.
Best Regards, Chris
 

Offline Bassman59

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Re: Free circuit simulator ?
« Reply #55 on: April 03, 2019, 05:22:57 pm »
What? Nobody's tried TI's offering apart from me?  :-\  One thing it does offer is most of TIs (NS) linear parts directly accessible rather than needing to find and import models.

TI-TINA? I've used it with certain TI parts. But its user interface makes LTSpice's look like the best thing ever.
 

Offline 0xdeadbeef

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Re: Free circuit simulator ?
« Reply #56 on: April 03, 2019, 05:49:36 pm »
I know it's obsolete and not even sold anymore, but I really liked "Electronics Workbench" in the late 90s and early 0s or so. Unfortunately, what was a fast, small, affordable simulator was bought by NI and became the sluggish, heavily overprotected and insanely expensive NI-Multisim. For some time, there were free versions of this first from Analog Devices and later on from Mouser ("MultiSim Blue"). I used both versions for a while despite the terrible license server crap, but after some time and without prior notice, the licenses were withdrawn. So from one day to the other you couldn't even start the application or open your projects anymore. Actually even in MultiSim Blue, you couldn't open the projects created with the previous AD version of MultiSim since opening projects created with these free versions was always only possible with the very same free version of the full commercial versions.

Anyway, following the cloud/web based trends of the last years, there seems to be web based version of multisim now:
https://www.multisim.com/
The page says "sign up for free" but I'm sure there's a catch and/or severe limitations if that is supposed to mean you can also use it for free to some degree. I mean, signing up is free for sure, but what does that even mean?

So anyway, even if LTSpice's GUI drives me crazy and it can be hard to impossible to get some non-LT (or even old LT) parts to run, I moved to LTSpice some years ago just because it's the only thing that you can somehow rely on  to be able to open your projects in a few years from now. And well, since Analog bought LT, there are even some AD parts there.
Trying is the first step towards failure - Homer J. Simpson
 

Offline lordvader88Topic starter

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Re: Free circuit simulator ?
« Reply #57 on: April 03, 2019, 05:56:19 pm »
What's Proteus like ? I have a version of that, if I can get it to install right


I'm assuming a lot of the online web-based sim's are so that if u make something really cool, the website owners can see it and copy it.
« Last Edit: April 03, 2019, 05:59:23 pm by lordvader88 »
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: Free circuit simulator ?
« Reply #58 on: April 03, 2019, 06:13:44 pm »
What? Nobody's tried TI's offering apart from me?  :-\  One thing it does offer is most of TIs (NS) linear parts directly accessible rather than needing to find and import models.

TI-TINA? I've used it with certain TI parts. But its user interface makes LTSpice's look like the best thing ever.
I did use a pirate copy of TINA, before TI bought it, but preferred LTSpice.

What's Proteus like ? I have a version of that, if I can get it to install right


I'm assuming a lot of the online web-based sim's are so that if u make something really cool, the website owners can see it and copy it.
You know what, I have that installed on my PC at work, but only use it for PCB design. For simulation I've always used LTSpice.
 

Offline DimitriP

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Re: Free circuit simulator ?
« Reply #59 on: April 04, 2019, 12:50:46 am »
......

I'm assuming a lot of the online web-based sim's are so that if u make something really cool, the website owners can see it and copy it.

it's probably "cheaper", and you can count every time someone uses it. So you have "metrics".  A win-win!

...and if one day the company decides...they just turn it off. Poof!
   If three 100  Ohm resistors are connected in parallel, and in series with a 200 Ohm resistor, how many resistors do you have? 
 


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