Helpful Electronics Design Resources
Whether you’re a seasoned engineer or just starting, having the right tools at your disposal can make a huge difference in the design, testing, and implementation of electronics projects and PCB design. Below is a list of valuable resources that can assist with circuit simulation, component searches, PCB design, and much more.
LTspice
LTspice is a very powerful, free circuit simulation software developed by Analog Devices, which is widely used by many engineers. It’s ideal for modelling analogue and mixed-signal circuits, offering complete control over many parameters, from resistor tolerances to specific simulation settings. It’s extremely useful for exploring how complicated circuits function and ensuring new designs will operate successfully, before anything is soldered.
Download LTspice | Analog Devices
Falstad.com Circuit Simulator
This is another very useful simulation tool, with the additional advantage of being browser-based. It visualises current flow and voltage in real time, making it far easier to grasp complex circuits. It also offers a wide variety of template circuits which can easily be explored.
The Art of Electronics by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill
All the electronics engineers in our office say they keep this book on hand (various editions across the generations). It is widely renowned as the go-to resource for all things electronics. It includes many example circuits, as well as the effective practices and common pitfalls of circuit design. It covers everything from foundational concepts like DC voltage and current to active filters, digital electronics, microprocessors and much more. It is a must-have for electronic engineers.
To get a sample of the book’s contents, some chapters can be viewed online, and they also have a few video demonstrations.
Octopart
Octopart is a valuable tool in searching for both components and suppliers. If you require a particular part but can’t find it in stock anywhere, Octopart will list whether anywhere else stocks that item. Equally, when trying to choose parts in the first place, Octopart also features a useful set of filters, displays costs and stock count. There is no point in designing a board with components you can’t source.
Electronic Components Search Engine | Find Parts Fast | Octopart
Digikey Search
Digikey is a US-based components supplier with a wide stock of components and fast delivery; however, the filters that you can apply when searching components are where their website particularly excels over other distributors. It offers you many options to help narrow down the perhaps daunting list of thousands of components to hundreds, or even fewer, depending on how selective you wish to be.
DigiKey United Kingdom | Electronic Parts and Components – Fast Shipping, Global Support
SnapEDA
SnapEDA is another helpful online component search tool. It particularly excels in providing easy access to symbols, footprints and 3D models for components to use in your PCB layouts, which can save a huge amount of time. Bear in mind it’s important to always verify any symbols and footprints downloaded from the internet against the component’s datasheet, as errors can occasionally occur.
Explore SnapMagic Search's Symbol & Footprint Libraries | SnapMagic Search
ST-MCU Finder
If you’ve chosen to use an ST microcontroller in your design, this software allows you to compare all the different options, with detailed information about each. The selection can be narrowed down using multiple criteria, including core type, CPU frequency, memory, price, package, I/Os, temperature grade and peripherals. Technical documentation can also all be found in one place and downloaded.
ST-MCU-FINDER-PC - STM32 and STM8 product finder for desktops - STMicroelectronics
KiCad
KiCad is a brilliant open-source electronics design suite. Included is a schematic editor, with an integrated SPICE simulator to verify your design, PCB editor and 3D viewer. It supports all the advanced functionality of other expensive design software, whilst being completely free. Even if you or your company already uses a different software, tools such as its Gerber Viewer are extremely helpful for double-checking exported files.
KiCad - Schematic Capture & PCB Design Software
Onshape (CAD)
Onshape is a powerful, browser-based CAD tool offering all the features of expensive software, but completely free for personal projects. No downloads are required, and it runs smoothly on any computer since all the computation is done on their servers. Plus, plenty of tutorials are available to help you get started in learning to use the software.
Onshape | Product Development Platform
Having the right tools can make all the difference to your PCB design. These are valuable resources for anyone working in electronics, whether you’re designing circuits, sourcing components, or creating PCBs. We hope these come in useful and you discover something new!
What would you add to this list? Did we miss anything?