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I'm looking for a program that will perform schematic capture and mixed-mode (analog and digital) circuit simulation. If it also did PCB layout and routing, that would be a bonus, but not necessary. I currently use an old version of CircuitMaker/TraxMaker, but it's dated, and the simulation engine is a bit lacking. Windows or Linux, doesn't really matter.

What is a good program for this purpose?

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7 Answers 7

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LTSpice from Linear Technology for simulation. KiCad for PCB

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You can try the following two links.

Electronics Lab

OrCAD

If you want to try for "PIC uC" micro controllers specially, you can get useful software from MicroChip, and also ask in their wiki.

I've some useful software but you will need more time & value to pay for these. So I don't share.

But "ORCAD" is not bad for normal users for schematic capture, mixed-mode (analog and digital) circuit simulation, PCB layout and routing.

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  • If you have content on www.microchip.com/wiki/ that you would like to share, please make a post on the Forum site in the appropriate thread. Forums can be found here microchip.com/forums/Default.aspx?
    – Nargis
    Apr 2, 2010 at 5:38
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Try qucs:

Qucs is an integrated circuit simulator which means you are able to setup a circuit with a graphical user interface (GUI) and simulate the large-signal, small-signal and noise behaviour of the circuit. After that simulation has finished you can view the simulation results on a presentation page or window.

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KiCad is a free schematic capture, PCB layout, gerber generator, etc package. Pretty capable and works decently well. It doesn't have built-in simulation, but I'd suggest LTSpice for that.

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Check out Xilinx (SP?). I remember they had a pretty good sweet a few years ago when I was in college. Requires either verilog or VHDL knowledge though, it won't just let you diagram it.

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  • Digital (specifically FPGAs) only, not analogue though.
    – Martin Thompson
    Aug 3, 2012 at 8:42
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NGspice is a mixed-level/mixed-signal circuit simulator. Its code is based on three open source software packages: Spice3f5, Cider1b1 and Xspice @ http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/

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  • Find a better link than SourceForge to download these packages. SourceForge is still bundling its own bits inside of its downloadable files. Even though the new management of the SourceForge website has publicly denied doing this, I have investigated this matter, and found that this wrong practice is still occurring.
    – karel
    Aug 10, 2016 at 5:47
  • @karel, it looks like sourceforge is their official hosting site. No other choice for a link. But at least now readers are forewarned. :-)
    – fixer1234
    Aug 10, 2016 at 6:31