#38🚀 Circuit Simulators Review

SuperPowers for Electrical Engineers

Jun 05, 2022

👋 Hello Supergineers! Dr. Molina here! 👨‍🔧

As electronic engineers, during the university, we have been taught to work with circuit simulators and suddenly SPICE ("Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis") appears.

Originally, SPICE was developed at the Electronics Research Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley by Laurence Nagel.

That was the beginning of the circuit simulators. Today, there are hundreds of them.

My first SPICE simulator was Orcad, from Capture. 15 years ago, they were leaders, for me was the TOP simulation and layout tool.

The cost and the complexity of usage was the reason why other simulators like PSIM appears. PSIM is a very simple and complete simulator. You can´t simulate details of transients or ZVS with detail, but you can ensure the functionality of the circuit in a specific range and the stability of his control.

Download PSIM 2021b Simulation Software Power Electronic Motor Control - Xtronic

From the free side, you have LTspice. A free spice-based simulator, created by Analog Devices. When I discover LTspice, I was already using iOS and there isn´t a compatible version for iOS (neither for the others…) what I can say, is it’s more related to my experienced colleagues. They liked it, they said there are a lot of limitations, but no big complaints. I think the most valuable feature of LTspice is being widely used, they have a huge community.

Of course, there are others like SIMPLIS, which I tried, and PLECS, which I have listened to very good things and comments, but we haven´t worked directly with PLECS.

The New Simulator

Following our vision of integrating the design of the magnetics with the simulation of the complete circuit, we bet on including a simulator at Frenetic. The main SuperPowers of our Simulator are:

Online Simulator
Predefined circuit templates
Direct integration with Frenetic Online
Compatible with any OS (Yes!! I use a Mac laptop and this is by far, the best solution)

But the best part for now is:

IT’S FREE!!

For the moment, we will keep it free. We want you to test, and give us feedback and we will work on improving it. In the future, will be for paid users.

For the moment, the only features for paying users of Frenetic Online are:

Save the project
Reload projects
Using Frenetic Online (obvious)

Here you have a video of how the simulator works.

What are you waiting for to start your simulation?

GO TO THE SIMULATOR

The Expert

I don´t remember when and how, but a couple of years ago I discover SIMBA and its founder, Manu Rutovic. He is a great guy, very smart, and a hard worker.

During the past APEC, he came to work in our booth, promoting our online simulator, based on his work and we had a very interesting conversation, where he gave me a basic class of circuit simulators. I love it. It was amazing, to understand the differences between simulators.

Therefore, I have invited him to our Training in Magnetics, to give a talk about Circuit Simulators.

If you have joined the Training, you will have access for free 🥳.

If you didn´t…I’m sorry, we have closed the June batch🤬.

START THE SIMULATION