To design an electronic circuit or to analyse one, it requires accurate methods for evaluating circuit performance. Moreover, modern electronic circuits are so complex that computer-aided circuit analysis is indispensable. On this introductory homepage, Pspice is used as the simulation tool to analyse the working of three different circuits.

Pspice from MicroSim Corporation is one of the many commercial derivatives of U.C. Berkeley SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis). It is widely used for analog circuit simulation.

Simulation can take on various levels of device and component modelling, depending on the objective of the simulation. Most of the simulation work in this course use idealized or default component models, making the results first-order approximations.

Writing a circuit file for Pspice simulation is quite easy. First of all, a circuit diagram must be drawn and all the nodes numbered. All the special devices like the diode, SCRs or transistors must be modeled before using them. Sometimes it may be possible to use the default models provided with the software package.

Probe is a separate program that comes with Pspice. It allows the user to look at the waveforms of different current and voltages. After running the Pspice file, the output required for running the probe is written to a .dat file if the .probe command was included in the original pspice circuit file. Probe is also capable of mathematical computations involving currents and/or voltages, including numerical determination of rms and average values, and fourier analysis.