Digital Circuits and Systems - Circuits i Sistemes Digitals (CSD) - EETAC

Electronic design automation (CAD/EDA) tools

1. Enriched text editor

Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages.

2. SPICE-based simulation and PCB design

	Proteu VSM from Labcenter Electronics (commercial) is a virtual laboratory and SPICE-based simulation of electronic circuits. Analogue electronics, digital circuits and microcontrollers simulation, all in one.	Available at the EETAC. Download and install the current professional version in your home or portable computer and run our cloud licence while EETAC student. Proteus examples. Contact us to get your you user/passwrd.
	Multisim from National Instruments (commercial) is the schematic capture and simulation program designed for schematic entry, simulation, and feeding to downstage steps, such as PCB layout.	Available at the UPC, student licence. Instructions on how to setup the software.
	KiCad integrates the open source spice simulator ngspice to provide simulation capability in graphical form through integration with the Schematic Editor. Current CSD and DEE KiCad symbols, footprints and 3D tuned components are available in these three libraries symbols.zip, footprints.zip, 3dmodels.zip to be unzipped for instance in the user 3rdparty directories.	Free software.
	Fusion 360 (includes Eagle).	Available at the UPC, student licence.

3. Mechanical design

Mechanical design. FreeCAD is made primarily to design objects for the real world. It works with KiCad to build 3D component models (ref.).

Free software.

4. Numerical engines and other digital simulators

	WolframAlpha. A powerful computing tool available from Wolfram Research. Examples on how to use it.
	HADES Java applets, a framework for interactive simulation from University of Hamburg. Here it is more information on how to use and install it.
	DEEDS Digital Electronics Education and Design Suite. Giuliano Donzellini, University of Genoa, Italy.
	LogicWorks is a schematic drawing and interactive digital simulation package for demonstrating logic design principles and practices within the education sector and industry.
	EDA playground is a free online simulation platform from Doulos company.

5. Minimisation of logic functions

	Minilog.exe application and tutorials on how to use it. (© W.M.J. de Valk). Minimisation program (source Wikipedia EXPRESSO).
	Logic Friday. Logic Friday takes the help of Espresso logic design minimiser to efficiently reduce the functions in your electronic design. Instead of using the traditional Karnaugh map method of min term reduction, the program manipulates the function iteratively to give a closely approximated result, eliminating redundancy. (ref.)

6. Lattice Semiconductor EDA tools for CPLD and FPGA

	Lattice Semiconductor Diamond.
	Lattice SemiconductorispLEVER Classic.

7. AMD EDA tools for CPLD and FPGA

ISE. Download and use the version 14.7 (2013). (ref). ISim is the integrated VHDL simulator that will be used to check our designs. This legacy software runs encapsulated in a virtual machine (Oracle VM) that opens a Linux operation system.

The Digilent Adept application is required for downloading the configuration .bit file to the board. It can work as an standard alone program.

Adept

Vivado is the new EDA tool from AMD to cover newer FPGA. To synthesise for a Basys 3 development board (Artix 7), it is enough the old version 2016.2 that can be installed in a virtual machine running Windows 7 .

8. Intel EDA tools for CPLD and FPGA

Intel Quartus Prime. Download and use the latest version.

ModelSim Intel Starter Edition is the integrated VHDL simulator that will be used to check our designs. Installation and examples.

NOTE: from version 21.3, ModelSim Intel Starter is replaced by Questa-Intel FPGA Starter Edition. MentorGraphics was adquired by SIEMENS.

9. Microcontroller programming environment

	Microchip integrated development environment. Indications on MPLABX-XC8 installation.
	XC8 C compiler.

Arduino integrated development environment.

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