Introduction to Electric Circuits, 9th Edition

APPENDIX A

Getting Started with PSpice

A.1 PSpice

SPICE, an acronym for Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis, is a computer program used for numerical analysis of electric circuits. Developed in the early 1970s at the University of California at Berkeley, it is generally regarded as the most widely used circuit simulation program (Perry, 1998). PSpice is a version of SPICE, designed for personal computers, developed by MicroSim Corporation in 1984 (Tuinenga, 88). SPICE was a text-based program that required the user to describe the circuit using only text, and the simulation results were displayed as text. MicroSim provided a graphical postprocessor, Probe, to plot the results of SPICE simulations. Later, MicroSim also provided a graphical interface called Schematics that allowed users to describe circuits graphically. The name of the simulation program was changed from PSpice to PSpice A/D when it became possible to simulate circuits that contained both analog and digital devices. MicroSim was acquired by ORCAD^®, which was in turn acquired by Cadence^®. ORCAD improved Schematics and renamed it Capture. “Using PSpice” loosely refers to using ORCAD Capture, PSpice A/D, and Probe to analyze an electric circuit numerically.

A.2 Getting Started

Begin by starting the ORCAD Capture program. Figure A.1 shows the opening screen of ORCAD Capture. (If necessary, maximize the ...