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Circuit Simulation

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Tom540

Wed Dec 12 2007, 10:04PM

Banned on 3/17/2009.
Registered Member #487 Joined: Sun Jul 09 2006, 01:22AM
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Fellow Geeks,

I was wondering what everyone here uses that is if you use a program for circuit simulation. I've realized that if I could simulate some things it would save my lazy ass some time.

I would like something easy to use and preferably free if that even exists.

I got a copy of Pspice from a friend and it looks like I'm gonna need to commit to it full time to figure out to do anything with it. Too many separate programs and I could not find a good tutorial. Not to mention it is probably overkill.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated or maybe a good Pspice tutorial.

-Tom

Marko

Wed Dec 12 2007, 10:09PM

Registered Member #89 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 02:40PM
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Posts: 3145

I second the enormous WTF factor of Pspice. Till this day I was never bothered to figure it out

Tom540

Wed Dec 12 2007, 10:48PM

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Registered Member #487 Joined: Sun Jul 09 2006, 01:22AM
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Marko wrote ...

I second the enormous WTF factor of Pspice. Till this day I was never bothered to figure it out

A good thing I didn't actually buy it.

Hazmatt_(The Underdog)

Wed Dec 12 2007, 11:07PM

Registered Member #135 Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 12:06AM
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I use PSpice to the best of my abilities. It's going to be one of the more accurate solvers because you can use more then the euler integration techniques to solve the differentials. Euler crashes if you try to solve for a discontinuous system like a Tesla coil.
I know Terry used Micro sim, dunno if that's free.

Multisim is okay as far as ease of use, but only gives you the euler solver, not good enough for some transient solving.

Tina is free with one of my books, I can't remember which one, probably the "Power Electronics" book I have.

Matlab also allows you to change the solver and if you are playing with power components in Simulink you can get pretty decent results, but that's voted down by most here because of getting ahold of a copy or $$$. Again you make friends in college, that is important to student survival!

There probably are more out there too. I think Tina is the most accessable even if you have to buy a fairly decent book to get it.

Ken M.

Wed Dec 12 2007, 11:07PM

Registered Member #618 Joined: Sat Mar 31 2007, 04:15AM
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I use Tina. It cost $40, but I'm wondering if its possible to E-mail or perhaps post it around here with the code so you folks can have it for free.

Carbon_Rod

Thu Dec 13 2007, 03:06AM

Registered Member #65 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
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NI Multisim in advanced analog simulation mode is accurate about 80% of the time if you don't use ideal models.

Protel/Altium Designer is still a $7000 joke. Yet its VHDL support is quite good.

Strict Spice based simulators are plagued by state problems (good trick, try setting up an H-bridge without initial state tags and it may short the simulation.)

Cheers,

Dr. Slack

Thu Dec 13 2007, 11:42AM

Registered Member #72 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:29AM
Location: UK St. Albans
Posts: 1659

This question comes up so many times, I've finally thrown some (the bare minimum) text onto the Wiki to start a page. Contributions to prettify and expand it, and to point at tutorials would be welcome.

Simulation - incredibly useful. It repays the little learning that is required to use the technique. A good place to start is modifying some examples. All programs (bar none, games, editors, compilers, simulators) have their quirks and ways of working. I stick to one simulator and try to learn it thoroughly. My favourite is Simetrix (it comes with examples, and model libraries), look on the wiki for where to get it, or other free simulators. Other users of this forum have other favourite programs.

Yes if you throw a difficult circuit down and don't take care of initial conditions, then you'll get rubbish out, but then if you don't understand the initial conditions, you don't yet really understand the circuit. And, yes, it's a drag when you try to iterate through an apparently simple resonant circuit and find that the strange oscillation is coming from the solver hunting around a diode current discontinuity and not the L and C. But hey, I figure my glass is about 95% full for using a simulator, I certainly release less blue smoke for using one.

Tom540

Thu Dec 13 2007, 03:23PM

Banned on 3/17/2009.
Registered Member #487 Joined: Sun Jul 09 2006, 01:22AM
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Posts: 617

Hmm, thanks for the suggestions. I'm gonna look into Tina. I think I have an old copy of electronics workbench now that i think about it but that program makes me wanna go postal.

Well I filled out a form to try the demo, so far i haven;t gotten an email. We'll see.

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