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cs2042 Design Automation Software - Circuit Design - PCB Design - for Windows, Linux, UNIX

A collection of Electronic Design Automation Packages for Linux, UNIX, and Windows Copyright 2005 Edition Arnold Kochman. Other copyrights apply, including but not limited to the GNU Public License. 

  About Me

Windows users will need one of the commonly available unzip type utilities, such as PKUNZIP or WinZip. Programs are distributed with source, when appropriate, and some programs in C, for example, will have to be compiled. In most cases binaries are included for Windows versions.

The various packages are at different levels of maturity and completeness, and I cannot certify that any are suitable for any particular purpose. You will have to judge for yourself.

Here is a listing of the packages included:

PCB - An interactive printed circuit board editor for the X11 window system. PCB includes a rats nest feature, design rule checking, and can provide industry standard RS-274-X (Gerber), NC drill, and centroid data (X-Y data) output for use in the board fabrication and assembly process. PCB offers high end features such as an autorouter and trace optimizer which can greatly reduce layout time.
    PCB was orignally written by Thomas Nau of University of Ulm, Germany, and is now maintained by Harry Eaton of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, USA. PCB runs under any Linux/BSD/UNIX system, including Mac OS X, NetBSD, and Solaris. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License. More information can be found at http://bach.ece.jhu.edu/~haceaton/pcb/.
TinyCAD - A program to help you draw circuit diagrams. It comes complete with symbol libraries to get you started straight away. As well as being able to simply print your designs, you can use TinyCAD to publish your drawings by copying and pasting into a Word document, or saving as a PNG bitmap.
    It can output into popular PCB layout programs in PADs & Protel format. You can use TinyCAD as a front end for a PCB layout program such as FreePCB or VCad Stripboard Layout Editor, by getting TinyCAD to create a netlist of your circuit. It also has a SPICE template engine to generate simulation files.
    TinyCAD is for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP. It is distributed inder the GNU Library or Lesser General Public License.
DigitalSimulator - A Virtual Electronics Lab, allowing you to design, simulate and output your digital circuit board designs. DigitalSimulator runs under Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License. Further information can be found at http://www.digitalsimulator.de/ (German)
Spice+ - A general-purpose circuit simulation program, based directly on SPICE 3F.5 from the University of California at Berkeley. An improved version of Spice for DOS, Windows and Linux/BSD/UNIX.
    Spice+ was developed so that university students and others to simulate their circuits without buying expensive commercial programs or crippled trial versions. Further information can be found at http://spicep.sourceforge.net/
ViPEC - A network analyser for electrical networks. It takes a schematic description of an electrical network, and performs a simulation of the circuit response in the frequency domain. Output is in the form of port parameters (S, Y and Z). ViPEC runs on Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP and Linux/BSD/UNIX systems. The source must be compiled on your system. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License.
    ViPEC is a powerful tool for the analysis of high frequency, linear electrical networks. ViPEC supports various lumped elements (capacitors, resistors etc.) as well as distributed networks like transmission lines, microstrip and stripline structures. Two port data files are also supported (e.g. the 2-port frequency parameters of various RF transistors as supplied by the manufacturer). The component library is under constant development with new elements added at regular intervals. Further information can be found at http://vipec.sourceforge.net/
TkGate - An event driven digital circuit simulator with a tcl/tk-based graphical editor. TkGate supports a wide range of primitive circuit elements as well as user-defined modules for hierarchical design. The distribution comes with a number of tutorial and example circuits which can be loaded through the "Help" menu. The example circuits include a simple CPU, programmed to run the Animals game. For more information, check out the documentation. It runs under Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP, and all BSD/FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD/Apple Mac OS X systems. TkGate is free software provided with source code under the Gnu General Public License. Further details can be found at http://www.tkgate.org/index.html
XCircuit - A UNIX/X11 circuit drawing application with schematic capture. Features user-definable parts libraries and fully hierarchical SPICE netlist generation. It runs on all Linux/BSD/UNIX systems, and can be made to run on Windows with an X-Server. XCircuit is distributed under the Artistic License
    XCircuit will produce publication quality electrical circuit schematic diagrams and related figures, and produce circuit netlists through schematic capture. XCircuit regards circuits as inherently hierarchical, and writes both hierarchical PostScript output and hierarchical SPICE netlists. Circuit components are saved in and retrieved from libraries which are fully editable.
    XCircuit is flexible enough to be used as a generic drawing program. XCircuit was written and is maintained by Tim Edwards, currently with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. XCircuit originated as a drawing program to render circuit diagrams for an undergraduate electrical engineering course in the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering Part-time programs. Since then, it has expanded to encompass schematic capture and is used by people all over the world for both presentations and as an Electonic Design Automation tool.
FreePCB An open-source printed circuit board layout editor for Microsoft Windows, released under the GNU General Public License. It was designed to be easy to learn and easy to use. It does not have an autorouter (yet). It can imports and exports PADS-PCB netlists. It can export extended Gerber files (RS274X) and Excellon drill files.
VCad - Stripboard Layout Editor. VCAD can import components and netlists via Protel Format (Protel, TinyCad), or Wirelist (SwitcherCad) net formats. Runs on Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP.
ExpressPCB - A circuit board layout program for Windows, distributed free by the board manufacturing company of the same name. http://www.expresspcb.com/index.htm.
TCI - A Windows program that makes it possible to quickly draw single or double sided circuit boards. The size of the circuit image is limited only by the size of the print medium. The TCI program is especially well adapted to producing prototypes and short runs. This program was written to provide an alternative to professional packages, that for may purposes are too complex, too expensive, and frequently not well adapted to Windows. (French language)
SDS - A circuit design software for Windows. This program allows the rapid design of electric schematics. It is very easy to master and uses normal Windows conventions. The package includes a rather complete component library; however, the user can also create his own components. (French Language)