Circuit simulation programs and linux

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Wild Weasel

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 6, 2004
Messages
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This post may contain some noob questions.


My school uses two programs for circuit/logic simulation: Circuit Maker and Max Plus. I was wondering if anyone has tried running these in wine, and if so, how well?

Windows has been a real pissoff lately and these two programs are the only thing thats holding me back from going to/learning linux.

Thanks
 
i keep a windows box around for all my engineering needs since all the programs tend to be windows based.

try duel booting maybe? i doubt you'll find any acceptable linux based replacements for any spice simulator... and i have no idea how well they'd work in Wine.

thats the biggest drawback to linux... sure it's good for server's, but the world already has all that that they need, try finding some accounting software for linux. the linux dev's need to start expanding there program list if they ever want to even make somewhat of a half assed attempt to compete with microsoft
 
Wild Weasel said:
My school uses two programs for circuit/logic simulation: Circuit Maker and Max Plus. I was wondering if anyone has tried running these in wine, and if so, how well?
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I used circuitmaker briefly in WINE this summer, but it seemed to work ok. It really isn't that great of a program to begin with though. Honestly, I have yet to find any electronics CAD software that I actually found to be productive to use. For all the projects I've been in so far, doing it by hand on paper is just as quick and has been a lot less hassle. Once you get a bit more experience doing circuits, it gets easier to get a good idea in your head what's going on in a cct.

Hmm, that got a bit off topic. Also, you might want to investigate gEDA. I haven't used it much, but it has potential. If nothing else, it has beautiful postscript output :D
 
Does your school have unix servers with Max Plus installed? You might be able to ssh into the school server and run Max Plus through xterm.

There is a Unix version of Max Plus, but there is no free student-use version of it. (I believe Max Plus originated on Unix).
 
For my classes we use ePD over a vnc server on our Unix servers, or on Unix boxes. Be thankful you don't have to use ePD, its the crappiest, least stable, quirkiest circuit building/simulation tool out there.
 
Try the Orcad suite, which includes PSpice. However, its quite pricey and the student version blows. Hopefully you go to a school so you can use the real thing in a computer lab or something.
 
BatteryAcid said:
...its the crappiest, least stable, quirkiest circuit building/simulation tool out there.
Click to expand...

I don't know if there actually exists a non-crappy, stable, non-quirky circuit building/simulation tool :). Why? I'm not sure. I really wish there was something that just Didn't Suck.
 
Facts of life in engineering:

1: The tools vendors provide suck
2: The documentation the vendors supply sucks


The people that make these tools aren't concerned with ease of use for the novice.

Back in my day (early in my undergrad days), we didn't have graphical circuit analysis tools. We wrote netlists by hand. I still do write some netlists by hand.

If you think circuit analysis tools are bad, you should check out embedded systems tools or worse yet, VLSI CAD tools.
 
Magic H8 Ball said:
Back in my day (early in my undergrad days), we didn't have graphical circuit analysis tools. We wrote netlists by hand. I still do write some netlists by hand.

If you think circuit analysis tools are bad, you should check out embedded systems tools or worse yet, VLSI CAD tools.
Click to expand...

I am in my undergrad days, and I write netlists by hand too, because it's usually quicker and produces better results :D. Typically I just feed them through ngspice and ngnutmeg.

You're scaring me though about the VLSI tools. I've got an assignment to do this week in Quartus... I haven't started yet, but I really hope that that tool isn't awful. I have my doubts though.
 
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