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I am looking for a free circuit simulator for educational purposes. My requirements are:

  1. Visual ("draw a circuit diagram, click simulate")

  2. It should contain light bulbs as circuit components such that

    2.1. They become (visually) brighter if you apply more power

    2.2. You can change the manufacturer specs for example "3.5V,0,2A"

  3. It should contain swiches, npn-transistors, diodes and LEDs as well (the LEDs should react to interactive changes in the simulation)

Any recommodations for this? It would be nice if the simulator runs under Linux, but that's not a strict requirement.

PeterJ
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student
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    Wasn't there a nearly identical question a few weeks ago? – Olin Lathrop Jan 05 '12 at 14:26
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    @OlinLathrop: you could vote to close it. – sybreon Jan 05 '12 at 15:01
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    @sybreon: I could, but then I'd have to do a search and find the question this is a dup of. – Olin Lathrop Jan 05 '12 at 15:25
  • @OlinLathrop - I thought there was, and I did the search, but I can't seem to find it. – Kevin Vermeer Jan 05 '12 at 17:21
  • @sybreon - Do you recall which question it was? Anyone? Given that the previous question is difficult to find, it could be good that we've got this one... – Kevin Vermeer Jan 05 '12 at 17:21
  • I was probably thinking of http://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/24009/4512, but that seems to have different content despite the title. – Olin Lathrop Jan 05 '12 at 18:20
  • https://www.circuitlab.com/ – old_timer Feb 29 '12 at 21:37
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    Please, am I just being terrible, but I can't see a lightbulb anywhere. –  Feb 15 '15 at 20:13
  • Additional feature: Live editing of the diagram while the simulation is running. Wire a capacitor/battery/light in parallel, with a switch in series with the battery. Turn on the switch, light turns on, turn off the switch, light slowly turns off. With the switch on, take out the battery and insert a lower-voltage one - light immediately gets dimmer. And so on. – user253751 Jan 14 '16 at 04:08

11 Answers11

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I often use the falstad simulator: http://www.falstad.com/circuit

It's a Java applet, so will work on pretty much any operating system. The interface does take a bit of getting used to, and there are problems saving in Linux (it gives you a link to copy and paste, and copy and paste in Java doesn't work too well in Linux).

Other than that it ticks all your boxes. It also has some good sample circuits. A Windows version (circuitmod) is based on this.

Majenko
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  • Thanks, that's nice. Do you know how is the format called, the program generates if one clicks on export? – student Jan 05 '12 at 13:09
  • Hm, yes, copy and paste doesn't work for me... – student Jan 05 '12 at 13:16
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    @user406686 It encodes the schematic into a URL – W5VO Jan 05 '12 at 14:50
  • @W5VO Yes this is the case if you click on `export link`. I mean the qource code you get if you click on `export`. – student Jan 05 '12 at 16:09
  • It's what gets encoded in the export link option. It's a custom format specific to this program. It contains a list of the coordinates, components, parameters, etc. You might be able to work out what is what by making small changes and exporting and looking for differences. – Majenko Jan 05 '12 at 16:19
  • @user406686 - It's open source. You can poke about in the import/export functions if you want to see how they work. – Connor Wolf Jan 08 '12 at 11:06
  • That's quite impressive - the UI is really wacky though and undo doesn't work properly. – UpTheCreek Dec 10 '14 at 12:09
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CircuitLab is a beautiful in-browser circuit simulator that was launched a few days ago by a pair of MIT students. I think electronics.SE is going to love it! It does full mixed-signal analysis and appears quite capable. I look forward to seeing where it goes!

Here's a screenshot:

CircuitLab screenshot

You can share circuits via convenient short URL's. For instance, here is the circuit shown in the schematic: http://circuitlab.com/circuit/fq7c97

nibot
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  • Not tried yet, but seems very neat! And seems that also Olin could "accept" it :) – clabacchio Feb 29 '12 at 10:13
  • Update: I've tried net labeling to replace wires, it works! Seems very nice!!! And it has a Spice-like simulation feature...now remains to try if it's possible to share simulations, even if I think that for something Falstad remains more immediate, like the visual representation of current and voltage – clabacchio Feb 29 '12 at 10:17
  • I just give it a quick try, too. Sharing seems VERY possible. I opened one of the quick-start circuits, hit "open in editor" and the circuit will open in the browser without the need of java/flash plugins. IMO, its just plain html. And one can run the simulation in the browser ... I think I am gonna love this one. falstad is nice, but the need to install java just for that plugin had always bugged me. The lack of animated current flow is negligible, imo. – PetPaulsen Feb 29 '12 at 10:42
  • You have to register to share circuits ... – PetPaulsen Feb 29 '12 at 10:45
  • @PetPaulsen surely it's negligible for "engineering" use, but to explain the basic of some devices can help more than a lot of words and numbers, I think – clabacchio Feb 29 '12 at 17:16
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    You need to pay to save circuits – sshow Sep 28 '17 at 12:55
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I like LTSpice you can find it here: http://www.linear.com/designtools/software/ It does jsut about everything.

Axis
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    LTSpice is great: it's friendly and free and works well. It's natively for Windows, but it works fine in Linux under WINE. However, it doesn't have the feature requested that "bulbs will glow more brightly when the voltage increases". That's something more likely found in toy programs, I think. – nibot Jan 11 '12 at 12:39
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    I would not say it is a friendly software but once you learn it you will have a very powerful tool. Plus it comes with all the Spice goodness - lots of libraries. – Szymon Bęczkowski May 04 '13 at 13:13
  • LTSpice is also available for Mac: http://www.linear.com/designtools/software/ – nekomatic Nov 10 '15 at 22:14
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I cannot vouch for its complexity, accuracy, or capability, but "EveryCircuit" for Android is free (for very small simulations; $10 for full version) and does change the intensity of brightness for light emitting diodes. It's kind of a fun mobile app.

JYelton
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PartSim is a free and easy to use circuit simulator that runs in your web browser. It includes a full SPICE simulation engine, web-based schematic capture tool, and a graphical waveform viewer. It also includes an integrated Bill-Of-Materials manager that lets you assign Digi-Key Part Numbers to your models. To test it, visit http://partsim.com/

FRAP
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I tried www.DoCircuits.com and found it quite easy to use, machine independent - works on the cloud, has real looking components and devices and is free :-) However, its an early version so I think many more features will get added - but I guess the direction is interesting.

Deb
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Try Autodesk 123D Circuits - kind of Fritzing-like user interface with simulation.

Dave Tweed
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Frodo Baggins
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    Welcome to EE:SE! There isn't a whole lot of info in this answer -- could you maybe edit in a link and/or a screenshot? – Greg d'Eon Jun 12 '15 at 01:08
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Take a look at both Qucs (slightly harder to use) and LTSpice. Both satisfy 1, 2.2, and 3. Qucs is linux, LTSpice is under windows. Neither satisfy requirement 2.1, unless you are okay with looking at graphs as analogs of brightness.

Edit: I've been using Multisim lately, and it is far superior to Qucs and LTSpice in terms of ease of use. Its pricey, though.

clabacchio
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Argyle
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I downloaded Yenka few days ago. Didn't get the chance to really try it out, but from the looks of it, it seems quite easy to learn and use. It is also free for none commercial use. This is from their website:

"Yenka Electronics lets you design and simulate circuits using over 150 types of component, testing and refining your design as you work."

Check it out here: http://www.yenka.com/en/Yenka_Electronics/

lyassa
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  • Never tried it, but I've seen some posted schematics and they seem really ugly. But I don't know how it works. – clabacchio Mar 01 '12 at 10:08
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SystemVision just launched online. It's free and supports modeling in VHDL-AMS, so it's a little different from the SPICE simulators. It has also has Datasheet Modeling Tools.

AdamC
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Another options would be ngspice it is an opensource program for circuit simulation. It looks fairly new, and I can't tell you how well it works. People are updating the software, so future improvements I imagine are expected.

Ashitakalax
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