Suggest A Circuit Simulation Software

[Alley_Cat_Jack]

Hello forums,

I am looking for a good software to use to develop and design circuits and simulate them running. I would like one that has an oscilloscope.

Right now I am working on designing a new bench power supply for myself. While I know these simulations aren't a replacement for actual physical readings, I more want to test my circuits to see if I did the math correctly on my components before ordering the more expensive ones.

Other features such as calculating heat, and PCB layout would be nice as well, but not necessarily required.

[stmdude]

Have you tried LTspice?  (Free)

[inteljoe]

I have not used it much, but you could try the Mouser version of Multi-Sim. I used the original Multi-Sim in school a bit several years ago.
http://www.mouser.com/multisimblue/

[Alley_Cat_Jack]

Have you tried LTspice?  (Free)

No, I haven't tried any in years. While back then, there was only a few to pick from, now I check and there are a lot of them. I just don't know what ones are up to snuff as far as accuracy on the emulation part.

I've noticed LTspice mentioned a few times in my searches, so I will give it a go. I just get a little worried sometimes when they are free, as they may not be full featured. I don't mind spending a few bucks if needed on a good one, so long as it's not a yearly rental of the software.

[Fulcrum]

I quite like TINA-TI. Don't take my word for it though, I haven't tried any other simulation software. But it works like a charm!

[danadak]

National Semi, TI, have a webench tool that includes sim as well
as thermal design capability.


http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/analog/webench/overview.page?DCMP=analog_power_mr&HQS=webench-pr

For Linux users QUCS is another tool. Matlab and Labview have interexting capabilities.


Regards, Dana.

[Apollyon25_]

I use (and have used, for a number of years) the free LTSpice, Tina and the free version of SIMetrix regularly.
Both LT and TINA are provided from silicon vendors Linear Technology and Texas Instruments respectively, so come from reputable sources.

Some circuits may simulate better in one piece of software than others. 

If you have calculated your circuit correctly, simulation may not show this. It depends entirely on the accuracy of the model and the parts its made from. And circuit complexity may run up against software limitations or speed of convergence.

My process, and it's probably not that different to what most other do, is to design the circuit, simulate it, build it and debug, then adjust the simulation model to match.
I find this makes you think more about implementation-induced parasitics, and part selection choices.
Both IRL and simulation-land.

[christos]

try Proteus labcenter ,got oscilloscope and other useful instruments,,desing pcb and other things

[Alley_Cat_Jack]

I tried Proteus and LTspice so far. They seem competent for the most part of what I'm attempting. I did notice that it's tricky in some of these to get a mains voltage source.

After a weekend of working on this power supply project and researching a lot. I decided to make the power supply microcontrolled rather than analogue. I'd like to make it modular, so I'm likely to use an Arduino. The software I use will need to work with that.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

[TimFox]

I am old-fashioned, and prefer a line syntax.
I use AimSpice, which has a free student version.
I use the post-processor to generate useful graphs, which I will download to Excel and from there to Grapher (Golden Software, not free).
The post-processor graphs aren't bad.
See
http://venus-ngl.tele.ntnu.no/
and go to the tab for "download software".