Good SPICE simulators

[rtarbell]

Can anyone recommend a good SPICE program to me? I am currently using AIMSpice (full version), but this is text based, and I'm looking for a reasonably priced graphical simulator like PSPICE that doesn't have the price tag, and doesn't have any limits to the number of parts or nodes used in a circuit.

Thank you!

[bocka]

I'm using TopSpice from penzar

[DaBit]

Check out LTSpice / SwitcherCAD from Linear Technology. It's free, it features a graphical editor, features Gmin stepping to find the DC operating point, is quite fast, and it has no 'student edition' limitations. I have used it to occasionally simulate analog cells on IC's with 15000 MOSFET's in them.

[bocka]

LTSpice / SwitcherCAD from Linear Technology

That is the worst one I've tried...

[rtarbell]

TopSpice lookes really good, can you make your own device models in it?

[jcx]

Originally posted by bocka


That is the worst one I've tried...

care to elaborate? - LtSpice does come with fewer models but you really need to hunt for good models anyway and they are easily added to the lib

LtSpice is used internally by Linear for IC design and has very powerful features and active support at the Yahoo group - the main programmer often responds directly, fixes are incorporated nearly weekly

Documentation is terse, you will need a generic spice book (or somebody else's tutorials) to learn spice with but LtSpice is the best Free package I've used

[DaBit]

Originally posted by bocka


That is the worst one I've tried...

I am sure that there are other simulators which outperform LTSpice on both performance and features, but for the occasional SPICE simulation I'm doing (really, how often do you tape out a chip?) it works just fine. And it won't cost you a dime. At least it's better than the raw Berkeley spice3f4 distribution

The main problems I have with LTSpice are it's graphical editor (so I just don't use it anymore and feed LTSpice a .cir) and it's incapability to handle these kind of constructions:

Rpure 3 4 'Rsh/mf*(l-dl)/(w-dw)*tfacp*(1+pvcp1*(tanh(pvcp2*abs(v(3,4)/(l-dl))+pvcp3)-tanh(pvcp3)))'

For many other problems such as SMPS it works very well.

[tschrama]

I use both LTspice and circuitmaker2000 demo... I used to run it on a AMD 200MHz with 48MB ram on win95 .. worked fine.. now on a AMD2700+ 1GB WinXP it runs even better..

LTspice is very nice, good working program and since it's free, you cann't beat the value for money. It's graphical schematic editor doesn't feel that nice.. but it works just fine...

Circuitmaker2000 is commercial, but a demo versions is availeble. It has a nice grafical schematic editor that feels good.. it also comes with a PCB router programm ...

goodluck,
Thijs

[jcx]

DaBit,
while I'm not sure exactly what you mean for the expression to do you can use behavioral sources with abs, tanh and 30-40 other functions of circuit V, Vdiffs, currents, and sim_time in LtSpice

remember: a Resistor is just a (terminal) Voltage Dependent Current Source and you could use .param to name and collect costants in a easy to find and edit block:

.param R=1

B1 N001 N002 I=V(n001,n002)/{R}

[bocka]

TopSpice lookes really good, can you make your own device models in it?

TopSpice a Spice 2e6 , 3f5, HSPICE compatible simulator at a reasonable price. If you use a simulator for more than occasional use (i.e. professional or semiprofessional), post analysis and considarably model support is more important than some hundred dollar.

You can make your own models in it. Penzar has a demoversion with a limited number of nodes and transistors. It's at least worth a try.