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An engineers software toolbox Part 1

Milind Gupta - March 25, 2013

I have always been fascinated by the number of software tools available to us that make our lives easier. As a practicing engineer I continuously optimize my software toolkit through trial and error to help me in my work life as well as my personal life. At Touchstone there is a very active culture of sharing knowledge. In that spirit I would like to share some of the software I use, hoping that it might be of help to you as well. Professionally, I design Integrated Circuits, using enterprise level EDA tools, but those are too pricey and too impractical for a hobbyist or for home use. Still, I like to have a Spice simulator for personal use as well and Ngspice is just that. It is a very actively developed and maintained open-source SPICE simulator that comes with many powerful features. It has full scripting support as well as support for verilog and user defined models. Ngspices website has many resources and links to programs that can be used to enter schematics and to look at simulation results. This free tool is platform independent, so whether you are a Linux fan or use Windows, you can use Ngspice easily. To view and edit layouts of ICs, I use Toped. It is a good open-source layout editor which comes with its own scripting language, although I have not used that feature. I like to have this software available when I look at a GDS file on my tablet, or draw out a layout for better documentation and communication. This is a cross platform software tool as well. KiCAD is excellent open-source software for board level circuit design. It has a large community of developers and users who are very responsive to any queries and requests. It comes with its own schematic editor, component editor, and PCB designer. It even has 3D viewing capabilities to look at your finished board or to use 3D data for enclosure design. KiCAD, too, is a cross-platform tool and works on Windows, Linux and Mac. Once you get the hang of it, this is a really powerful tool for PCB design. When I have to evaluate and solve large design equations, I like to use Maxima, a wonderful tool to get this done quickly. It allows you to do symbolic as well as numerical Math. Maxima is an open-source computer algebra system, which has its roots in MIT, dating back to the 1960s. It has a very large and active community of users. To record and later recall notes and other data, I find TiddlyWiki an excellent self-contained wiki to use. Unlike most wikis, it doesnt need a server or a database. It is just one HTML file that you open and edit with your browser, so this is truly a cross-platform and highly mobile wiki! It has a huge community and there are hundreds of plugins available for complete customization. The advantage of using this over traditional word processing programs is that you can link and cross link stuff very easily. So your notes become a web of connected information, much like how it is stored in your brain.
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In my next post I will share some more interesting software from my toolkit, including math packages, programming languages and office software. In the mean time, I would love to hear what engineering software tools you are using.

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