Electrical Engineering & Electronics Design

Personally I like to use EasyPC, OrCAD, Pulsonix, Pads PCB and ETAP.

1) EASYPC - https://numberone.com/

2) OrCAD - https://www.orcad.com/

3) Pulsonix - https://www.pulsonix.com/

4) Pads PCB - https://www.pads.com/

5) ETAP - https://etap.com/

These programs the best of the best in design, simulation, testing, virtual operation, fault analysis, and development to construction software for electrical and electronic circuits. Further augmentation can be made using EMAS, NASTRAN, and other FEA Modelling Software (https://www.mscsoftware.com/products), ANSYS (https://www.ansys.com/), and the Solidworks Electrical Schematics add on (https://www.solidworks.com/product/solidworks-electrical-schematics). This rounds our my entire design suite, everything else I use is either physical or in my head... and you can't have my tools or the space between my ears....

I also constantly use Multi-Sim to simulate circuits, but only analog or digital logic circuits. I tried to work in MultiSim with a PIC16F84 microcontroller, but after spending a lot of time, I did not get a result. And PROTEUS, for example, copes with this task perfectly well. But this does not diminish the value of MultiSim, especially in the field of analog and power electronics, which is the most valuable for me.

I had a quick scan through Michael and looks like a good selection of software. I will check them out further.

I have already got Solidworks electrical and solidworks PCB powered by Altium included in solidworks premium although I have had niggling issues transitioning over. More to do with the frustration of speed of progress and finding the components I need from librarys with it more than anything else. At the moment I think I am forced to work with the tools at hand unfortunately as I need a new trinocular microscope. I will take my latest design through solidworks PCB and get it to the PCB ordering stage just to get some practice in.

Thanks for the advice Michael much appreciated.

I always end up going back to Multisim and Ultiboard to design new circuits. It is frustrating, I am trying to get out of this habit but the circuit simulator is so helpful and for sheer design speed it is difficult to veer away from because I am now so use to the software.

I like to design and simulate my own circuit designs, it is a great learning process and I always learn something new simulating new circuit designs.

Lately I heavily use LTSpice. On the first try it may appear inconvenient to use and not that feature rich as the big names in the game, though its real power in the hidden or even officially undocumented features and I learn something new almost every time I use it. And it's free to use.

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What about Proteus?

Has also simulation for circuits and microcontrollers?

Personally I used Proteus and I think is better then NI Multisim!

Hello George,

I will give that a look in a moment and check it out. Thanks for the comment.

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for all the suggestions. Great stuff.

I agree ! Its free and supports all of analog devices and linear technology parts !!

SIMetrix , I saw this passing recently, did not know this one yet. Also no experience with it.

for anyone interested I came across these (2) social media websites for electrical circuit simulations :

youSPICE :

https://www.youspice.com/

eCircuit Center :

http://www.ecircuitcenter.com/

https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2017/03/13/pcb-design-software/

The simulator I have used for close to two decades is Yenka. It has an extensive library of components including PIC's and PICAXE microcontrollers along with flowchart programming up to (IIRC) 2K lines, also with a compiler to directly program a PICAXE chip. Of course it has limitations, but with creativity it works quite well. my favorite aspect (Well, one of them) is if you have overloaded a component it actually explodes! You can turn that feature off of it annoys you, just remember to turn it back on before specifying component wattage ratings!