Electronic Workbench circuit simulator

t06afre

Joined May 11, 2009
5,934
Hello, Can anybody direct me to a website to download the Electronic Workbench simulator program. Thanks
If I am not very wrong the firm behind electronic Workbench was acquired by National Instruments some time ago. And they changed name to Multisim.
http://sine.ni.com/np/app/flex/p/docid/nav-98/lang/no/
The link will give access to a 30 day trail version. That is the best I can do. This site do not allow any links to anything on the wrong side of the copyright law
 

Audioguru

Joined Dec 20, 2007
11,248
Almost every school kid who asks about expensive Multisim asks why does it not work properly.

Most of us are experienced adult engineers and we do not use Multisim, we use free LTspiceIV.

Why don't teachers know this??
I know, I had a very old teacher one time. His teachings were very out of date.
Old teachers should retire.
 

BSomer

Joined Dec 28, 2011
434
Multisim was what the college I went to used. It is a decent enough program but is somewhat limited in the simulation aspect. I never used it as a simulator though, that is what the breadboard is for in my opinion.
 

crutschow

Joined Mar 14, 2008
34,285
My view is that a good Spice analog simulator is a required tool to develop and optiminze an analog circuit design including looking at alternate designs and observing the effects of component tolerances, etc. Then you breadboard it for the final tweaking of the design. A simulator is an indespensable part of my design tools. Any electronic design engineer that graduates from college and isn't familiar with circuit simulation is seriously limited when it comes to analog circuit design.
 

Ron H

Joined Apr 14, 2005
7,063
My view is that a good Spice analog simulator is a required tool to develop and optiminze an analog circuit design including looking at alternate designs and observing the effects of component tolerances, etc. Then you breadboard it for the final tweaking of the design. A simulator is an indespensable part of my design tools. Any electronic design engineer that graduates from college and isn't familiar with circuit simulation is seriously limited when it comes to analog circuit design.
I agree.
I'm old and retired. I designed and breadboarded a TON of circuits, some very high performance, in my career, including quite a few that didn't work. I would have given my left cojón for a simulator. It would have saved me a LOT of time.
 

crutschow

Joined Mar 14, 2008
34,285
I agree.
I'm old and retired. I designed and breadboarded a TON of circuits, some very high performance, in my career, including quite a few that didn't work. I would have given my left cojón for a simulator. It would have saved me a LOT of time.
So am I. And I would have given one of those same appendages for a calculator that could perform polar-rectangular conversions when I was in college. Doing that conversion on a slide-rule was a royal pain. ;)
 

Audioguru

Joined Dec 20, 2007
11,248
I still have my slide rule. I haven't used it for about 50 years.
I also still have an old calculator that has an LED 7-segment display.
 

ramancini8

Joined Jul 18, 2012
473
My view is that a good Spice analog simulator is a required tool to develop and optiminze an analog circuit design including looking at alternate designs and observing the effects of component tolerances, etc. Then you breadboard it for the final tweaking of the design. A simulator is an indespensable part of my design tools. Any electronic design engineer that graduates from college and isn't familiar with circuit simulation is seriously limited when it comes to analog circuit design.
The simulator is a great tool that you can't be without, but it is only useful when you have calculated the component values, voltages, and currents with a calculator. Going directly to a simulator can lead to some pretty bad circuits because simulators have a tendency to lie and it is hard to know what results to expect if you hanen't done the calculations. A simulator is invaluable for checking out circuit variations.
 

crutschow

Joined Mar 14, 2008
34,285
The simulator is a great tool that you can't be without, but it is only useful when you have calculated the component values, voltages, and currents with a calculator. Going directly to a simulator can lead to some pretty bad circuits because simulators have a tendency to lie and it is hard to know what results to expect if you hanen't done the calculations. A simulator is invaluable for checking out circuit variations.
Of course. A simulator is not a substitute for doing the design calculations. But it's very useful for verifying a design's operation and catching design errors. Then you go to the breadboard. In most cases the breadboard will operate closely to the simulation.
 

ramancini8

Joined Jul 18, 2012
473
I was talking to the new engineers who have a tendency to simulate prior to calculating. You may not think that this happens, but as an applications engineer I saw it at least every month. Both cases happen: the design works and the simulator doesn't or the sim works and the design doesn't.
 

crutschow

Joined Mar 14, 2008
34,285
I was talking to the new engineers who have a tendency to simulate prior to calculating. You may not think that this happens, but as an applications engineer I saw it at least every month. Both cases happen: the design works and the simulator doesn't or the sim works and the design doesn't.
I am not surprised that if you work as an application engineer with a lot of feedback from customers that have problems simulating circuits (who are likely newbies, or not very good designers), then you likely would have a somewhat negative view of simulators. I think that's why Bob Pease had his bad opinion about them. But they are very useful for good engineers who do the paper design before simulation or do them somewhat interactively to optimize the design. You don't hear about those because they don't call you with problems. Obviously iterative design by simulator is not a valid design approach.

I would never want to do an analog design without a simulator. I do it for even the simplest circuits before I build them. And they have helped me numerous times in the analysis of circuit problems in circuits already build to determine the cause which, if it's a working circuit, can often be quite subtle and difficult to find.
 
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