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Free/affordable SPICE simulator

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dengorius:
Hello everybody,

can anybody suggest me a (preferably) free or not too expensive SPICE simulator?

I'd like one that has a reasonable amount of parts and, at this stage, i'm only looking for basic functions: no funky stuff like monte carlo simulations or similar.

I've only tried ltspice and pspice. I was curious to see if there is anything else worth mentioning out there.

Just out of curiosity, does Altium Designer include it's own SPICE simulator?

Thanks in advance

wd5gnr:
I have not found a thing to beat LTSpice for free. There are several options on Linux but LTSpice is still better.

If you haven't found it yet, there is a very active Yahoo group for LTSpice.

DJPhil:

--- Quote from: dengorius on April 25, 2010, 02:08:52 am ---Hello everybody,
can anybody suggest me a (preferably) free or not too expensive SPICE simulator?
I'd like one that has a reasonable amount of parts and, at this stage, i'm only looking for basic functions: no funky stuff like monte carlo simulations or similar.
I've only tried ltspice and pspice. I was curious to see if there is anything else worth mentioning out there.

--- End quote ---
Chalk up another vote for LTSpice. There's just so much hobbyist community support with LTSpice and it's brethren that whenever I've tried something else I felt somewhat lost by comparison. Admittedly my needs are very modest, but I'm confident it will take quite a project indeed to make me wish I had more power. I find it knits well with KiCad, and those two pretty much have me covered from idea to pcb.


--- Quote from: dengorius on April 25, 2010, 02:08:52 am ---Just out of curiosity, does Altium Designer include it's own SPICE simulator?

--- End quote ---

As I understand it, Altium Designer does everything . . no, I mean everything. I think there's a module for poaching eggs, and I'm pretty sure there's one for selecting the ice cream preferences of your future children.

Here's a bit from the wiki about mixed signal simulation, and there's other types of simulation as well (like signal integrity). With an omnivorous development environment like this you're usually covered, it's just a matter if whether it's done the way you want or are familiar with.

dengorius:
Thanks guys, yes i know the yahoo group for ltspice and i have to say it's pretty cool.

I'll also try national instruments' multisim just to see what it looks like

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