Software Tools For Building Electronics

There are many software tools that can help you Building Electronics . Although you can draw and calculate it on a paper, Using software tools makes your building electronics job easier. The only thing software can’t do is fire up the iron and melt solder on that PC board. That’s still your job, but by using software tools for helping you build electronics make your job faster and work more like what you expected. If you read previous article about building an audio level controller, You will realize that you need a software for helping you building electronics.

Mainly, software tools for building electronics divided by four. They are

1. Schematic and PC Board Layout
2. Eletronic Simulators
3. Mechanical Drawing Software
4. Utilities and Calculators

Schematic and PC Board Layout Software For Building Electronics

Software that you can use to lay out your own circuit boards is PCB Layout and drawing schematic (schematic capture). The Following packages listed here include both functions. While enterprise packages can cost thousands of dollars, there are some capable packages available for free or at very low cost. However, free packages always comes with limitation such as how many pins (Integrated Circuit Pins) and etc. For a beginner in circuitbuilding, Here are the list of Schematic and PC board layout software can you use

• Easy PC (http://www.numberone.com)
• DipTrace (http://www.diptrace.com)
• Eagle (http://www.cadsoft.de)
• Designworks Lite (http://www.capilano.com/dwlite.html)
• Express PCB (http://www.expresspcb.com)

Electronic Simulators Software for Building Electronics

With Electronic Simulators, it’s possible to do almost all your developmental work at the computer and only turn on the soldering iron for the final version. Electronic Simulators are powerful programs, They have steep learning curve when you get beyond simple simulations. These two packages are freeware version of enterprise level circuit simulators:

• MicroCap (http://www.spectrum-soft.com/index.shtm)
• Intusoft ICAP (http://www.intusoft.com)

Mechanical Drawing Software for Building Electronics

One of important step for building electronics is make accurate drawings of panel layouts and other mechanical parts for your project. These list of Mechanical Drawing Software can help you to do that

• Vector Engineer (http://www.vectorengineer.com)
• CADSted (http://www.cadstd.com)
• Scale (http://www.stiftsbogtrykkeriet.dk/~mcs/Scale.html)
• Dial and Panel (http://www.hfradio.org/wb8rcr)
• Gpaper (http://pharm.kuleuven.be/pharbio/gpaper.htm)

Utilities and Calculators for Building Electronics

Here are two of my favorites utilities and calculators software

• Hamcalc (http://www.cq-amateur-radio.com/HamCalcem.html)
• Convert (http://joshmadison.com/software/convert)