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Cheap, Cross-Platform Electronic Circuit Simulation Software?
dv82 writes "I teach circuits and electronics at the undergraduate level, and have been using the free student demo version of OrCad for schematic capture and simulation because (a) it comes with the textbook and (b) it's powerful enough for the job. Unfortunately OrCad runs only under Windows, and students increasingly are switching to Mac (and some Linux netbooks). Wine and its variants will not run OrCad, and I don't wish to require students to purchase Windows and run with a VM. The only production-quality cross-platform CAD tool I have found so far is McCad, but its demo version is so limited in total allowed nets that it can't even run a basic opamp circuit with a realistic 741 opamp model. gEDA is friendly to everything BUT Windows, and is nowhere near as refined as OrCad. I would like students to be able to run the software on their laptops without a network connection, which eliminates more options. Any suggestions?"
Whether running Linux or Windows - aren't you going to run into some serious horsepower issues if you try to accommodate students who own netbooks?
I don't see why. Most student level electronics simulation just shouldn't be all that CPU intensive. When I was an EE student 10 years ago, people did just fine with 150MHz machines running SPICE.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Qucs is very capable.