We would set-up a system of equations based on the schematic and circuit theory, and we would solve for the variable(s) of interest (say, some voltage in the circuit), to see whether it would theoretically behave as we want to We would draw a schematic of the electric circuit Traditionally, we would approach electronic circuit design like this: This document will discuss possibilities of porting stuff from Pspice to ngspice (from gEDA), but only in terms of simulation of electric circuits and to see what it all means, let's take a look back at the basics. So, as I only occasionally have to delve into this, I usually forget all the basics related to simulation - so I thought I'd write it up this time ( while it's still fresh :D) for future reference. In other words: simulating a circuit with a couple of elements, in order to do a simple theoretical exercise - is simply not a reason good enough for me, to experience proprietary software vendor lock-in.

Now, back in the late 90's, I don't think there was even anything else to use and even these days - if you're designing your latest iP(o)(a)d circuitry and you need speed and efficiency, it's obviously reasonable to invest in software that will increase your productivity, in order to hoard the tons of ca$h from your productĪnd - of course you can install the old PSpice Student under Wine (see Installing & Running PSpice Student 9.1 on Ubuntu Lucid - Ubuntu Forums) - but I find it very irritating that I'm led to use proprietary stuff like PSpice all over again, even for relatively simple things - when there are open source tools these days, that actually will ( even though in a slower, and maybe not as streamlined, manner) perform the same job just as well. Well, it's been a while since I've done electric circuit simulation in my bachelor days, however every once in a while I have to do it yet again - and usually I'm expected to run Pspice 9.1 Student version for Windows.

Orcad pspice 9.1 full version