While the links on the Internet EE Information
page provide access to a vast array of engineering software and utilities,
this page just has information and convenient links to a couple of the most
sought-after packages: MicroSim's(r) evaluation
version of Pspice, and schematic/PCB editors such as PADS Schematic
and PCB software. Links to other design & simulation software are at
the end of this
page. I am not an expert on any software
listed here. Except for PADS, my experience ends with installing these packages.
Specific questions about Spice should be directed elsewhere. Please explore the
links here before e-mailing any other questions.
UN-L EE Students: If you don't have the PKUNZIP.EXE program needed
to unpack files, copy it from the Z:\UTILS subdirectory on the PCs in the
Nebraska Hall user rooms. Download any software either directly to floppy disks
(make sure you have enough space) or to a subdirectory on the hard drive.
PSpice
(Please note: this page concentrates on a couple versions
of Pspice for 80x86 series computers: a more comprehensive list of Spice sources
that includes other computing platforms can be read here.
)Also, the latest versions of MicroSim's software can be found here. Also, Intusoft has a demo version of their
ICAP/4Windows available.
Versions 6.0 of Pspice Design Center for Windows : Unzip each of the
following three files onto three floppy disks to recreate the installation disks
for this version.
Version 6.2 for Windows appears to be available from ftp://klingon.ee.iastate.edu/pub/pspice/
as self-extracting zip files. I have not tried these and do not know if which
files you need, or whether they need to be extracted onto "installation
floppies" instead of simply unpacking into a program directory.
I've got an old PC, no Windows, no math chip . . .is there a version of
Pspice I can run? You bet. The following are the self-extracting
archive files you need. These DON'T create installation disks; you should
create a directory for Pspice on your hard drive, copy these files into it, and
run them one at a time. Click on these links:
Note that although this can run on 8088 and higher PCs with
only 640k of RAM, Pspice still wants all the memory you can give it and
may refuse to work until you remove some of your device drivers or TSR programs.
Here's another way to get version 5.4, which is the DOS version used in the E.E.
PC labs.
With a floppy in a diskette drive (we'll assume drive A:), type
PKZIP -& A:PSPICE F:\APPS\PSPICE\*.* [Enter]
It will prompt you to keep inserting floppies until it's compressed the
whole Pspice 5.4 directory contents into one big .ZIP file that spans several
diskettes. To unpack it, put the first disk in a drive on your computer at home
(again, let's assume drive A:), create a directory called C:\PSPICE (or whatever
you want), change into that directory with CD \PSPICE and then type
PKUNZIP A:PSPICE [Enter]
It'll ask you for the floppies it needs till it's done. Make sure you read
the README.DOC file.
PADS Schematic and PCB
Students in the UN-L E.E. Department can't take
home the Protel software from the PC labs,
although some sort of limited demo version can be downloaded from their web site. What we have suggested to students
instead is that they use a freeware version of PADS Logic & PADS PCB.
It is not as well documented as a commercial program, and the user interface
is very non-intuitive. But it is quite powerful, has large parts libraries, and
has been used in the EE Shop for some of our projects. (NOTE: Since we now
use Protel for our work, I have not used PADS in some years and am not an
on-line authority for questions.) It has a limit on the size of the designs
it can do. We have installed it on several EE lab machines, including the ones
in the WSEC 333 Projects Lab. It supports a lot of output options and can
generate Gerber photoplot files that can be used by the E.E. Shop IBC Boardmaker
system. To learn about the current commercial version, see PADS Website.
Where to get it . . . You can download compressed archives of these
floppies right now from the Web, but there are some special considerations
with the PADS files that other archived files don't have and that you must
take into account to be able to install it on your machine. To download the
three PADS disks:
If you are using Mosaic or xmosaic, find and activate the
Optionsmenu item that says Load to disk Lynx or
Netscape software should figure out that the links you will use aren't Web
documents and will ask you if you want to just download them, and yes, you do.
Then click on the following links.
Download: (from Oakland's SimTel archive) PADSLOG.ZIP
(1.08M), the schematic editor; PADSPCB.ZIP
(1.03M), the PCB layout program; and PADSLIB.ZIP
(488K), the library files and programs that both of these use.
(NOTE: these files are found in many other on-line archives if the above
links don't work. Do a search for these file names at Shareware.com ).
Un-select the Load to Disk menu option so you can continue
to use Mosaic normally.
These are archived images of the installation disks that MUST be
uncompressed to floppy disks in a certain way before you can use them to
install PADs. The program PKUNZIP must be in your computer's path to
unpack these. The EE PC lab computers should have PKUNZIP on them.
Make sure you are in the directory on C: that you downloaded the files
into. Now put a floppy in a drive and change to that drive. We'll assume you
are using drive A:, so put the disk in A: and type A: [Enter]
Unpack the downloaded archives with the command PKUNZIP -D
C:PADSLOG Repeat for the other two archives using "C:PADSPCB" and
"C:PADSLIB" on the command line instead of "C:PADSLOG": each of the three
files will require it's own floppy. The "-D" switch on the line recreates the
directory structure needed on the floppy disk, and without this the program
will not be installable.
Now you have the installation disks. The PADSLOG and PADS PCB disks both
have a program named PINSTALL on them that you run to install the programs.
It's pretty self-explanatory, but be advised that you have to perform the
"Hardware Installation" for both the Logic and PCB packages before you
run them. VIDEO TIP: many VGA adapters seem to work fine with the
Paradise 800x600 setting in PINSTALL.
What about instructions? The PADSLOG and PADSPCB disks each have a
file named DOCS.EXE on them, but they are not identical. They
are self-extracting archives of the tutorial files and PINSTALL does NOT copy
them over when installing the program. Put each of the two floppies into the
drive in turn, make sure that you are in the PADSDEMO directory on C: (that's
the default directory) and then type A:DOCS [Enter] You will end up
with files named MANUAL.LOG and MANUAL.PCB. These are NOT
comprehensive reference manuals: they are each tutorial files about 40
pages long. You are advised to read them and do the examples. PADS is NOT
a program that you can just run and figure out on the fly. You can read
the manuals on-line right here: PADS PCB
and PADS
Logic.
A Few Tips . . . A few hints to reduce frustration when first
using PADS can be read here.
Incidentally, to run the programs you have to use the batch files
provided: type LOGICS [Enter] to run PADS Logic and PCBS [Enter]
to run the PCB program.
I got the following e-mail regarding PADS installation on newer, faster
systems: "...this time of re-installing Pads from the floppies, it would not
install and I would get an error of "Could not find this file. May not be in
Path." when it tried to copy the files off the floppies. Something in my
start-up was running the set up too fast, and the set up couldn't keep up (or
so it appears), as the programs were not being copied from source to
destination but the set up program thought it had. Doing a Shft-F5 at start-up
(or reboot) to a clean DOS prompt solved the problem."
Sound like a
hassle? Be advised: electronics CAD programs are inherently sophisticated
things, and I've never seen one worth having that didn't take a big investment
in time to learn. Don't get the idea three weeks before your project is due that
you're going to find or buy and learn to use a PCB layout program and do your
project drawings on it. You'll be sorry.
A somewhat newer version of PADS can apparently be had: I've got no experience
with it. To learn about it, read padstdx.txt
and then get these three files to unpack according to the
instructions: padstdx1.zip
(750K) padstdx2.zip
(1105K) padstdx3.zip
(909K)
Some notes from PADS Software themselves:
"Here's a guy who taught with that system and wrote a workbook for it...
Asst. Prof. Marc Herniter Northern Arizona University Electrical
Engineering Dept. Flagstaff, AZ 86011-1560 (602) 523-2300
The new program is not exactly shareware, needs 486dx and at least 16 meg
MINIMUM for the windows port. Don't expect to have an easy time with it either,
this is meant to be walked onto a site by a salesperson, demoed and left to be
considered by customer....but people are using it."
AutoCAD PCB
AutoDesk's AutoCAD computer drafting program
is found on a lot of University computers, including the Mechanical Engineering
PC room machines. The E.E. Shop developed AutoCAD-PCB, (72K),
a package of scripts, predefined blocks, and instruction for doing PCB design
with AutoCAD. Some exerpts from the documentation that discuss general aspects
of using software to make boards can be read here. Also, some additions
and modifications by an AutoCAD-PCB user can be seen here.