Electronic Design Software

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.


PLEASE NOTE: 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:

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.

More Software . . .

In addition, here are links to the home pages for
Even more E-CAD software links can be found through Printed Circuit Design Magazine's buyer's guide and directories, or through this index of CAD/CAE companies.
 
Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln / Electronics Shop Web Page

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