What is the best software for designing circuits?

[exequor]

What software do you guys use to design circuits? I have OrCAD 10 which is good for design and simulation but it does not support exporting to more commonly used formats, such as *.gif, *.png, etc. Also I hate ms visio, and smart draw is mediocre. I just need an app just for drawing circuits.

 

[david90]

is orcad 10 the same as PSPICE? If not then get PSPICE. I have the free versio n for student if u want it.

 

[ranger]

I use Multisim for all my circuit design and simulations. Sometimes I export it to ultiboard to see how it would look as a PCB.

 

[exequor]

is orcad 10 the same as PSPICE? If not then get PSPICE. I have the free versio n for student if u want it.

With the Cadence suite you get Capture, PSpice, PCB wiz, etc.

I was looking for a simple app that I could just use for design, mostly for logic circuits.

 

[berkeman]

With the Cadence suite you get Capture, PSpice, PCB wiz, etc.
I was looking for a simple app that I could just use for design, mostly for logic circuits.

I think you can just get the schematic capture part of OrCAD, but maybe they don't offer that anymore? I'd recommend that you still use OrCAD for your schematics, if possible. It's pretty much the industry standard for many applications, so getting good with it is a plus in the job market. Also, with OrCAD you can do a Select, Copy, and then Paste into many other applications like Word, etc. Very handy for documentation.

We use OrCAD CIS for our schematics and BOMs, and we use MicroCAP for our analog simulations. Too bad there is not automated way to use the same schematic for both things. The PSPICE link might be working better now than it was several years ago with OrCAD, so that might be a good combo package for folks who do analog & digital designs. We use Xilinx tools for the FPGA designs using Verilog, and we use Leanardo for more ASIC-specific design simulations.

 

[stmoe]

I've used a program called TinyCAD before, you can pick it up at sourceforge (for win) http://sourceforge.net/projects/tinycad its free, I don't do circuits or anything for any real use other than hobby , so I don't know if its very good or not. Actually... If anyone does get it I wouldn't mind knowing if it is a good program or not ...