1.4 ● The TINA program

The netlist can be read as follows: V1 is connected between nodes 3 and 0 and its value is 5, R4 is connected between nodes 0 and 1 and its value is 470, R3 is connected between nodes 2 and 1 and its value is 2.2k, R2 is connected between nodes 0 and 2 and its value is 3.9k, and finally R1 is connected between nodes 3 and 2 and its value is 1k. The list is terminated with END.

1.4 ● The TINA program

There are many commercially available professional circuit simulators on the market. Some educational establishments or private individuals also offer simulators free of charge that can be downloaded from the Internet. Some popular currently available circuit simulators are TINA, Altium, Proteus, PSPICE, SiMetrix, CircuitLab, LTspice, Multisim, Micro-Cap, PLECS and CircuitLogix.

TINA is a professional integrated computer simulation program including schematic circuit design, analogue and digital circuit simulation, Hardware Description Language, VHDL, Verilog, Verilog A, Verilog AMS, SystemC, PCB design, filter design, RF circuit design, microcontroller system design, equation editor, logic design, and other useful electronic design and simulation tools. The TINA software package has been developed by DesignSoft (www.tina.com). The latest version of TINA is v12.1, which is distributed in several forms to meet the needs of various individuals and companies. TINA v12 is available in both 64-bit and 32-bit editions. If you purchase TINA, both versions are provided. The 64-bit version finally resolves the memory issues you may have experienced with larger projects.

A unique feature of TINA permits you to bring your circuit to life with the optional USBcontrolled LabXplorer hardware that turns your computer into a powerful, multifunction T&M instrument. With LabExplorer, you can carry out remote measurements which is great for distance education.

TINA is distributed in two major versions – Standard and Design Suite. TINA Standard includes circuit simulation only, while TINA Design Suite also includes an advanced PCB designer. This fully integrated layout module has all the features you need for advanced PCB design, including Multilayer flexible PCBs with split power planes, powerful autoplacement & auto-routing, rip-up and reroute, manual follow-me trace placement, DRC, forward and back annotation, pin and gate swapping, keep-in and keep-out areas, thermal relief, fanout, plane layers, Gerber file output and much more. TINA and TINA Design Suite also have different editions tailored to customer needs. Some HDL languages and the Mechatronics extension are optional. Both the Standard and the Design Suite versions are provided in 64-bit and 32-bit editions.

TINA is also available online with the name TINACloud which can be accessed with a web browser at any time, anywhere provided there is Internet access.

Some features of the TINA Design Suite are summarised below: