 |
LT Spice |
 |
LTspice IV
LT Spice IV is a free spice 3 based simulator from Linear Technology. Originally called Switchercad this simulator was used in analysing switched mode power supplies, but has the ability to work with transistors, FET's and IC's and has become an invaluble tool for circuit simulation and schematic drafting.
To grab yourself a copy, visit this page on Linear Technologies web site. The program can be run under both windows and linux. For linux just make sure you have "Wine" installed, most modern linux distributions include wine on their software repositories.
LTspice User Group
LTspice has proved so popular that a yahoo user group has been started. To become a member first create a free yahoo email address the click the link below:
LTspice Yahoo Group
The yahoo group is a great place to go for help. In addition to the forums, the files section contains new models and downloadable circuits.
LTspice User Manual
A comprehensive user manual (in pdf format) is available at this address on Linear Technologies web site.
LTspice Getting Started Guide
Linear have also produced a nice getting started guide (in pdf format) at this address.
Adding New Components
The yahoo LTspice user group has a files section where you can download new components. Download the file and place it in the component directory. On windows this location will generally be C:\Program Files\LTC\LTspiceIV\lib\cmp
If you are running LTspice from linux then a wine folder will be created for each user on the system. Download component files to /home/tux/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/LTC/LTspiceIV/lib/cmp (Just replace user "tux" with your own user name.) You can bookmark this folder in your favourite file manager; konqueror if using KDE or nautilus if using Gnome.
LTspice Downloads
Transistors click for new models and save in the directory mentioned above. This file is required to simulate any european transistor e.g. BC107 featured in circuits on my site. Please note this file will overwrite existing model files.
The following circuits were drawn and simulated in LTspice, click the link, the download is presented on the page.
1 Hour Timer
Low Frequency Oscillator
