Software for Schematic, PWB, and Spice?

[First Year Student]

I am a First Year Student going for a BSEE.

When I get into industry, they will want me to
know how to do Schematic Capture, PWB Layout,
and SPICE simulation. What software is the most
popular and/or most likely to land me a good job?
Price is no object for me; I have a large trust
fund and would rather spend this month's $25K
check on software than on the stuff I usually
waste it on.

Related question; if I ever become an independent,
what's the best (as opposed to most widely used)
software for Schematic Capture, PWB Layout, and
SPICE simulation? Again, price is no object.

-- First Year Student

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <c45dsi010hu@enews3.newsguy.com>,
Chris Carlen <crobc@BOGUS_FIELD.earthlink.net> wrote:
[...]

toward that end. LtSpice also runs perfectly well under WINE in Linux.

Make that almost perfectly and I'd agree. The cross hair cursor when
drawing wires doesn't work right.


There are a few free PCB layout tools out there. Last time I tried it,
the one called "PCB"[*} for Linux worked well enough to do hobby boards.

[*] So creative


--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

[Leon Heller]

"First Year Student" <anonymous@example.invalid> wrote in message
news:106ccsk37fhspb8@corp.supernews.com...

I am a First Year Student going for a BSEE.

When I get into industry, they will want me to
know how to do Schematic Capture, PWB Layout,
and SPICE simulation. What software is the most
popular and/or most likely to land me a good job?
Price is no object for me; I have a large trust
fund and would rather spend this month's $25K
check on software than on the stuff I usually
waste it on.

Related question; if I ever become an independent,
what's the best (as opposed to most widely used)
software for Schematic Capture, PWB Layout, and
SPICE simulation? Again, price is no object.

Pulsonix starts at about $3300 including SPICE and is the best of the
mid-range packages, IMHO:

http://www.pulsonix.com

It's very easy to use, any bugs get fixed very quickly, and support is
excellent.

Leon

 

[Rolavine]

Subject: Software for Schematic, PWB, and Spice?
From: First Year Student anonymous@example.invalid
Date: 3/27/2004 6:08 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id: <106ccsk37fhspb8@corp.supernews.com


I am a First Year Student going for a BSEE.

When I get into industry, they will want me to
know how to do Schematic Capture, PWB Layout,
and SPICE simulation. What software is the most
popular and/or most likely to land me a good job?
Price is no object for me; I have a large trust
fund and would rather spend this month's $25K
check on software than on the stuff I usually
waste it on.
snip

Give me half of it and take you sweetie on vacation to Hawaii! Say buddy want
to invest in my one man band electronic engineering company.

Rocky
Overworked, Underpaid, insane, hardware, software, pcb design, parts ordering,
test system making, embeded programming, windows programming, electronic hermit
monk. Hell send to to Hawaii, lol!

 

[Kevin Aylward]

First Year Student wrote:

I am a First Year Student going for a BSEE.

When I get into industry, they will want me to
know how to do Schematic Capture, PWB Layout,
and SPICE simulation.

They might well do, but whether you should become good at all is another
mater. Do you want to be a design engineer or a board layout
technician?

By all means, learn a bit about pcb layout, but those with BSEE's,
shouldn't, in my view, be concerned much about drawing pretty pictures.

If you do all, you will probably be treated as a flunky.

What software is the most
popular and/or most likely to land me a good job?

I don't think it really matters much what you learn on as regards to
getting a job, even though sometimes companies might request specific
experience.

Price is no object for me; I have a large trust
fund and would rather spend this month's $25K
check on software than on the stuff I usually
waste it on.

Are you serious dude?

Why the f&*k do you want to work at all?

What do you err.. waste you money on... blonds with big tits...fast
cars...cruises.....you want to trade this an become a geek EE. Your
sick.

Related question; if I ever become an independent,
what's the best (as opposed to most widely used)
software for Schematic Capture, PWB Layout, and
SPICE simulation? Again, price is no object.

There is no "best". All software has pros and cons. Some have features
better then others, whilst also having other features that are worse. As
far as ease of ease in a spice, SuperSpice is the best.

Get the demos, and play with them. That is the only way to find out if
that software is for you. There are as many opinions as people, and all
of them are incorrect, except mine.

Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

"quotes with no meaning, are meaningless" - Kevin Aylward.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

See my notes and links to some 60 ECAD programs at
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/ECADList.html

Terry Pinnell
Hobbyist, West Sussex, UK

 

[SioL]

"Terry Pinnell" <terrypin@dial.pipex.com> wrote in message
news:5qdd601adb7es21rntnoupm8ap6iuud9jj@4ax.com...

See my notes and links to some 60 ECAD programs at
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/ECADList.html

Terry Pinnell
Hobbyist, West Sussex, UK

I don't see Tango

SioL

 

[Fred Bloggs]

First Year Student wrote:

I am a First Year Student going for a BSEE.

When I get into industry, they will want me to
know how to do Schematic Capture, PWB Layout,
and SPICE simulation. What software is the most
popular and/or most likely to land me a good job?

The ORCAD suite of products is the de facto industry standard by far,
and this would be the "best" for your purposes. Everything else snatches
at crumbs of the market from buyers who can't afford the big guns.

 

[Bill Sloman]

kensmith@violet.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote in message news:<c45i5l$fsj$5@blue.rahul.net>...

In article <c45dsi010hu@enews3.newsguy.com>,
Chris Carlen <crobc@BOGUS_FIELD.earthlink.net> wrote:
[...]
toward that end. LtSpice also runs perfectly well under WINE in Linux.

Make that almost perfectly and I'd agree. The cross hair cursor when
drawing wires doesn't work right.


There are a few free PCB layout tools out there. Last time I tried it,
the one called "PCB"[*} for Linux worked well enough to do hobby boards.

[*] So creative

PCB has quite a long history. I'm on the gEDA mailing list, purely as
a lurker, and my impression is that the current version of PCB is
perfectly adequate for most professional boards - it doesn't seem to
be able to handle more than eight-layer boards, which could be a
restriction in some applications, and doesn't seem to offer an
auto-router, which some might see as a positive advantage (I had a
very frustrating time with an Orcad auto-router a few years ago.)

For the latest version of PCB see

http://pcb.sourceforge.net/

For gEDA see

http://www.geda.seul.org/

which points you to a whole collection of open source electronic
design software

http://www.opencollector.org/

------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Guy Macon]

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> says...

auto-router, which some might see as a positive advantage (I had a
very frustrating time with an Orcad auto-router a few years ago.)

Ah, the Orcad auto-router...

After the company I worked for bought it (on the strength of the
DOS version of Orcad schematic being so good) I tried and tried
to make it work. Finally I got down to a a test case of a
resistor and a capacitor in parallel - the simplest circuit
I could think of. The OrCad autorouter took over five minutes to
autoroute it and the result had 27 vias! I am sure that Orcad
has improved a lot since then, but I tend to mistrust a company
with management that allows something like that to ship.


--
Guy Macon, Electronics Engineer & Project Manager for hire.
Remember Doc Brown from the _Back to the Future_ movies? Do you
have an "impossible" engineering project that only someone like
Doc Brown can solve? My resume is at http://www.guymacon.com/

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <xqGdnZGGZtUTbPvdRVn-tw@speakeasy.net>,
Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com> wrote:
[...]

Ah, the Orcad auto-router...

After the company I worked for bought it (on the strength of the
DOS version of Orcad schematic being so good)

The people who wrote the DOS schematic capture are now all retired or
dead. Orcad really isn't even the same company it was back then. The
PCB-II program had a few bug but if you called them, they'd tell you how
to avoid trouble. At about the time the new PCB-386 program came out,
they changed and you couldn't get a straight answer out of them to save
your life. Then they got bought by Cadence. For a while it looked like
Cadence was just going to shut them down. Lately it looks more like they
are getting ready to cut them loose.



I tried and tried

to make it work. Finally I got down to a a test case of a
resistor and a capacitor in parallel - the simplest circuit
I could think of. The OrCad autorouter took over five minutes to
autoroute it and the result had 27 vias! I am sure that Orcad
has improved a lot since then, but I tend to mistrust a company
with management that allows something like that to ship.


--
Guy Macon, Electronics Engineer & Project Manager for hire.
Remember Doc Brown from the _Back to the Future_ movies? Do you
have an "impossible" engineering project that only someone like
Doc Brown can solve? My resume is at http://www.guymacon.com/

--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

[Chris Carlen]

Ken Smith wrote:

In article <c45dsi010hu@enews3.newsguy.com>,
Chris Carlen <crobc@BOGUS_FIELD.earthlink.net> wrote:
[...]

toward that end. LtSpice also runs perfectly well under WINE in Linux.


Make that almost perfectly and I'd agree. The cross hair cursor when
drawing wires doesn't work right.

That's odd. It really works 99.99% perfectly for me. The only problem
is with editing some fields in dialogs like to put in many parameters
for a PWL source.

But the crosshairs work perfectly.

So I wonder, what are your Linux and WINE versions? I'm not using the
original WINE in my Suse 8.1 distribution, but a newer one that I think
was compiled by Suse community member.

Also have you talked to Mike about this problem, or tried it with a
recent LTSpice version?

The product is officially supported to work with Linux under WINE, so
with some effort it should be possible to get it to a level of
functionality that is as close to perfect as necessary to no have to
worry about it.

I still have that uncomfortable feeling with most programs under WINE,
but with LTSpice that just isn't the case anymore.

Good luck.



--
_____________________
Christopher R. Carlen
crobc@earthlink.net
Suse 8.1 Linux 2.4.19

 

[Guy Macon]

Terry Pinnell <terrypin@dial.pipex.com> says...

See my notes and links to some 60 ECAD programs at
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/ECADList.html

Also see:
http://www.embeddedlinks.com/chipdir/m/eda.htm
(Mirror: http://www.avocetsystems.com/chipdir/m/eda.htm)


--
Guy Macon, Electronics Engineer & Project Manager for hire.
Remember Doc Brown from the _Back to the Future_ movies? Do you
have an "impossible" engineering project that only someone like
Doc Brown can solve? My resume is at http://www.guymacon.com/

 

[Tim Wescott]

First Year Student wrote:

I am a First Year Student going for a BSEE.

When I get into industry, they will want me to
know how to do Schematic Capture, PWB Layout,
and SPICE simulation. What software is the most
popular and/or most likely to land me a good job?
Price is no object for me; I have a large trust
fund and would rather spend this month's $25K
check on software than on the stuff I usually
waste it on.

Related question; if I ever become an independent,
what's the best (as opposed to most widely used)
software for Schematic Capture, PWB Layout, and
SPICE simulation? Again, price is no object.

-- First Year Student

Not all CAD tools are alike, but once you've learned one you know 90% of
what the others will do. If you can't learn new CAD tools quickly
you'll fail anyway, so concentrate on being a good engineer who's not
locked into any one thing.

I'd say get something cheap and put that check into the early retirement
fund.

---------------------------------------
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 18:08:14 -0800, First Year Student
<anonymous@example.invalid> wrote:

I am a First Year Student going for a BSEE.

When I get into industry, they will want me to
know how to do Schematic Capture, PWB Layout,
and SPICE simulation. What software is the most
popular and/or most likely to land me a good job?
Price is no object for me; I have a large trust
fund and would rather spend this month's $25K
check on software than on the stuff I usually
waste it on.

Related question; if I ever become an independent,
what's the best (as opposed to most widely used)
software for Schematic Capture, PWB Layout, and
SPICE simulation? Again, price is no object.

-- First Year Student

I really like PADS for schematic entry and PCB layout. You can get the
demo CD and see how it feels. Like any cad program, there's a healthy
learning curve.

John

 

[Bill Sloman]

Fred Bloggs <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message news:<4066C44C.5030406@nospam.com>...

First Year Student wrote:
I am a First Year Student going for a BSEE.

When I get into industry, they will want me to
know how to do Schematic Capture, PWB Layout,
and SPICE simulation. What software is the most
popular and/or most likely to land me a good job?

The ORCAD suite of products is the de facto industry standard by far,
and this would be the "best" for your purposes. Everything else snatches
at crumbs of the market from buyers who can't afford the big guns.

I don't know what Orcad is like at the moment. Orcad 9.0 was pretty
horrible.
The design data was all stored in some inaccessible proprietary format
so that you couldn't use search and replace to change signal names

Sci.electronics.cad seemed to favour Protel - it was half the price,
and easier to use.

PCB running under Linux is free - in both senses of the word - and
accessible. Worth a look.

-------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Roger Gt]

X-No-Archive: yes
"Guy Macon" wrote
: Bill Sloman wrote
: >auto-router, which some might see as a positive advantage (I
had a
: >very frustrating time with an Orcad auto-router a few years
ago.)
:
: Ah, the Orcad auto-router...
:
: After the company I worked for bought it (on the strength of the
: DOS version of Orcad schematic being so good) I tried and tried
: to make it work. Finally I got down to a test case of a
: resistor and a capacitor in parallel - the simplest circuit
: I could think of. The OrCad autorouter took over five minutes
to
: autoroute it and the result had 27 vias! I am sure that Orcad
: has improved a lot since then, but I tend to mistrust a company
: with management that allows something like that to ship.
:
I bought a early version of ORCAD and got the Auto-router to work
for most things. It could NEVER route a connector, and was pretty
bad on any Analog circuits, but through hole Digital was not too
bad, with only a little touch up.

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <c4752n016q2@enews4.newsguy.com>,
Chris Carlen <crobc@BOGUS_FIELD.earthlink.net> wrote:

Ken Smith wrote:
In article <c45dsi010hu@enews3.newsguy.com>,
Chris Carlen <crobc@BOGUS_FIELD.earthlink.net> wrote:
[...]

toward that end. LtSpice also runs perfectly well under WINE in Linux.


Make that almost perfectly and I'd agree. The cross hair cursor when
drawing wires doesn't work right.


That's odd. It really works 99.99% perfectly for me. The only problem
is with editing some fields in dialogs like to put in many parameters
for a PWL source.

Yes, I'm using SuSE 8.1, and last months version of Wine. I just
installed the latest LTspice.

The cross hairs get drawn but they don't get undrawn. The result is that
the screen ends up with many cross hairs. I still manage to get the
schematic drawn with only a little extra bother of having to go in and out
of the wire draw a lot.


[...]

Also have you talked to Mike about this problem, or tried it with a
recent LTSpice version?

If others had the problem, I'd take it to Mike. If its just a quirk of my
system that I can work with, I'd rather not use up my credit.

I still have that uncomfortable feeling with most programs under WINE,
but with LTSpice that just isn't the case anymore.

Here's a fun one:

I run dosemu. Under it I run Orcad's schematic capture. At work I run
Windoze, in a DOS window, I run the dos Orcad. Windows demands that Orcad
only be run as a full screen application. However, dosemu runs it ok in a
window on my desk top. Under windows any error message pops me out of the
window into the "Do you want to run this in MSDOS" dialog. Under dosemu,
the errors work correctly.


--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

[JeffM]

Windows demands that Orcad only be run as a full screen application
Ken Smith

You know the old Alt+Tab trick, don't you?
http://www.google.com/search?&q=alt-tab+shortcut+between-windows

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <f8b945bc.0403281449.41dd975c@posting.google.com>,
JeffM <jeffm_@email.com> wrote:

Windows demands that Orcad only be run as a full screen application
Ken Smith

You know the old Alt+Tab trick, don't you?

Yes but it still means I can't have the PDF viewer and the schematic side
by side.


--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge