Mac version of MultiSim or a similar Mac alternative?

[terriyaki]

Does anyone know if there is a Mac version of MultiSim? It's an electronic circuit simulator program.. figured if there were Maple alternatives there'd be some electronics program alternatives.

Short of a Mac version do you guys know if there would be any similar programs for OS X?

Please, please, please let there be some alternatives. I really don't want to install VPC on my iBook.

[TDM21]

If anyone finds one, I am interested as well.

I have used MultiSim in VPC before. After 3 D-latches and 1 clock chip, along with a 7 segment LED, I brought VPC to a screeching halt. The power just wasn't there to simulate the circuit.

[terriyaki]

Bump

I've found MI Sugar and QUCS.

Anyone out there have any experience using these? I've installed them both and experimented with them a bit but I'm still unfamiliar with them. Any comments about these programs or recommendations for other programs would be really helpful.

Thanks in advance.

[mduser63]

Originally Posted by terriyaki

Bump

I've found MI Sugar and QUCS.

Anyone out there have any experience using these? I've installed them both and experimented with them a bit but I'm still unfamiliar with them. Any comments about these programs or recommendations for other programs would be really helpful.

Thanks in advance.

I first installed MI-SUGAR quite a while back. Couldn't really get it to work, so I kind of forgot about it and just continued to use PSpice on my PC. I revisited MI-SUGAR a couple months back and actually spent an hour or so figuring it out, and I've grown to really like it. It can definitely be improved, but right now its only version 0.57, and for being relatively unfinished, it's very impressive. Haven't tried QUCS, I just found out about it the other day.

I'm actually just starting to learn Objective-C and planning to learn Cocoa once I get Objective-C down OK. The thing that motivated me to do that is a desire to improve MI-SUGAR (besides having wanted to learn to program for a long time).

If you're looking for Verilog software, there's a program out there called IVIonOSX or something similar. It's really not well finished, but I have successfully used it in combination with the Icarus open source command line Verilog compiler to simulate somewhat complex Verilog designs. I haven't found a schematic->Verilog app like you can get for the PC, but I really don't feel that such a thing is particularly useful. Verilog is only really powerful when you write it in text form like you'd write a program.

[-::ubermann::-]

hey i downloaded qucs but when it doesnt open, i click on it and bounces once, and do nothing
MIsugar doesnt exist anymore
do you know another alternative?
i really dont want to use windows, i even have suse on my macbook and im thinking to change into debian..

[mduser63]

Originally Posted by -::ubermann::-

hey i downloaded qucs but when it doesnt open, i click on it and bounces once, and do nothing
MIsugar doesnt exist anymore
do you know another alternative?
i really dont want to use windows, i even have suse on my macbook and im thinking to change into debian..

MI-SUGAR is open source, so it does still exist, it just seems that the original author no longer offers it on his site. I'd be happy to upload a copy (including source-code) if anyone wants it. As for QUCS, I could never get it to launch either. MI-SUGAR on the other hand actually works, and I've successfully used it to complete quite a few assignments for which PSpice was "required".

EDIT: Looks like you have to have the QT runtimes installed for QUCS...that may be the problem.

EDIT2: Yep, after installing Qt-Mac (found here), QUCS launches fine, and it looks pretty promising. I don't have much of a need for SPICE-type simulation this year (focusing on VLSI and advanced electromagnetics stuff right now), but if I did, I'd definitely try to figure out how to use QUCS effectively.

[-::ubermann::-]

Originally Posted by mduser63

MI-SUGAR is open source, so it does still exist, it just seems that the original author no longer offers it on his site. I'd be happy to upload a copy (including source-code) if anyone wants it. As for QUCS, I could never get it to launch either. MI-SUGAR on the other hand actually works, and I've successfully used it to complete quite a few assignments for which PSpice was "required".

EDIT: Looks like you have to have the QT runtimes installed for QUCS...that may be the problem.

EDIT2: Yep, after installing Qt-Mac (found here), QUCS launches fine, and it looks pretty promising. I don't have much of a need for SPICE-type simulation this year (focusing on VLSI and advanced electromagnetics stuff right now), but if I did, I'd definitely try to figure out how to use QUCS effectively.

Thanks man, i got qucs working!
it would be nice if you upload MI-sugar, where would it be? via torrent?

[mduser63]

Originally Posted by -::ubermann::-

Thanks man, i got qucs working!
it would be nice if you upload MI-sugar, where would it be? via torrent?

No, I'd have to put it on my own web space. Which I suppose I'll do now. I'm including both the application itself and the source code in the same zip file. The app is Universal. It's written in Objective-C/Cocoa except for the GNUCap and SPICE backends, and is provided as an XCode project. I have a longterm goal of sort of reviving the project if I can because it's particularly useful to me, and I kind of think that was the author's intent when he open-sourced it.

Anyway, download it here (8 MB).

Note to people finding this thread via search in the future: That link will almost certainly be dead within a few weeks when I do my periodic cleaning of my webserver. If you need/want MI-SUGAR, PM me and I can probably send it to you again.

[janiegirl]

Thanks for posting MI SUGAR! I've been looking for it as well...

*janiegirl*

[Zetto]

Macintosh Platform

Combo Simulation/Layout/Schematic Capture

QUCS (schematic and simulation not SPICE) OSX packages
http://naranja.umh.es/~atg/

gEDA (schematic, netlist, simulation, pcb) fink .info files for OSX
http://www.ghz.cc/charles/fink/

MI-SUGAR (schematic and simulation) OSX 1.3 Carbon
http://www.macinit.com/misugar/

XCircuit (schematic and netlist)
http://xcircuit.ece.jhu.edu/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xcircuit/
(install on OSX with fink: $fink install xcircuit)

PCB Layout Software

Eagle
http://www.cadsoftusa.com/
Osmond PCB
http://www.swcp.com/~jchavez/osmond.html

Circuit Simulation

Freeware SPICE for Mac (Classic and OS X) -
http://newton.ex.ac.uk/teaching/CDHW/MacSpice/

Found this on another forum.

[LtRammstein]

Which of these programs is closer to a Xilinx environment?

Steve

[Saladinos]

Anybody have a working mirror to MI-SUGAR binary or source?

[macforumrider]

Originally Posted by mduser63

No, I'd have to put it on my own web space. Which I suppose I'll do now. I'm including both the application itself and the source code in the same zip file. The app is Universal. It's written in Objective-C/Cocoa except for the GNUCap and SPICE backends, and is provided as an XCode project. I have a longterm goal of sort of reviving the project if I can because it's particularly useful to me, and I kind of think that was the author's intent when he open-sourced it.

Anyway, download it here (8 MB).

Note to people finding this thread via search in the future: That link will almost certainly be dead within a few weeks when I do my periodic cleaning of my webserver. If you need/want MI-SUGAR, PM me and I can probably send it to you again.

you are very thoughtful, could you post this again? I am new to macs and would like a spice program to use here.

Thanks

[dizzin]

mduser63

could you post mi sugar and the other programs again? or send them to me it is only 8 mb that not to much to email.
anyway thanks

greetz dizzin

[uanuglyfool]

Can anyone send me a copy of MI Sugar

Thanks

[22Hertz]

I recently found Mi Sugar through a Google search.

You may also want to check out MacSpice. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet so I don't know how it compares to the other spice's out there.

[farhadtheruler]

hey mduser63

i would also appreciate if you could post MI-SUGAR again..

thnx

[MAC-PRO-DEMON]

MacSpice seems a pretty good alternative to MI-Sugar.. but I don't really have anything advanced enough to run through it...

J

[farhadtheruler]

i looked at MacSpice, but i dont think it does what i need it to, plus, i can't use the command interface

i am looking for something that would enable me to use IC chips (7476N, 7432...)

is there a program that does that?

[easybe]

Find MI-SUGAR here: http://www.kulfx.com/index.php?secti...s&item=misugar

Easy.

[SilentWarrior]

I tryed mi-sugar but all i get is a textbox with commands (i just started messing around with eletronics).

I wanted something that could output this, or similar :



So you could actually experiment stuff and see how things work in a more hands-on approach.

ftw

[KiwiLee]

SilentWarrior... Whats that screenshot from? Looks just what i am looking for too, and even if it means running on XP then so be it.. What is that please?

[kgiann78]

Originally Posted by mduser63

I first installed MI-SUGAR quite a while back. Couldn't really get it to work, so I kind of forgot about it and just continued to use PSpice on my PC. I revisited MI-SUGAR a couple months back and actually spent an hour or so figuring it out, and I've grown to really like it. It can definitely be improved, but right now its only version 0.57, and for being relatively unfinished, it's very impressive. Haven't tried QUCS, I just found out about it the other day.

I'm actually just starting to learn Objective-C and planning to learn Cocoa once I get Objective-C down OK. The thing that motivated me to do that is a desire to improve MI-SUGAR (besides having wanted to learn to program for a long time).

If you're looking for Verilog software, there's a program out there called IVIonOSX or something similar. It's really not well finished, but I have successfully used it in combination with the Icarus open source command line Verilog compiler to simulate somewhat complex Verilog designs. I haven't found a schematic->Verilog app like you can get for the PC, but I really don't feel that such a thing is particularly useful. Verilog is only really powerful when you write it in text form like you'd write a program.

Hey mduser63, have you seen kulfx.com? Somebody took your words and is trying to evolve mi-sugar! It's new name will be Volta... Tell me that is you that is working on this project!!!

@KiwiLee this should be from pSpice (I guess only available for Windows...)

[CylonGlitch]

Originally Posted by LtRammstein

Which of these programs is closer to a Xilinx environment?

Steve

Steve, Nothing is like the Xilinx environment. I would love for Modelsim to be ported but I don't see that happening any time soon; in fact, never. Modelsim hasn't changed in 10 years, I seriously don't think that they are doing any real development on it.

Actel released their IDE for Unix but nothing specifically for OSX. I'm a bit disappointed in this, but I guess that's par for the course.

I do run all the Xilinx and Actel tools in a VMWare machine, it works fine that way just not as fast as it could be. Besides, I'm sure that if they brought the tools to OSX they would still have the same issues and crappy interface instead of Macafying them.

[erikkadeb]

I am implementing Multisim with Parallels, Windows XP. let you know how it works