idealCircuit

idealCircuit is a lightweight Windows application whose purpose is to help you design analog circuits using a set of predefined objects and test the circuits.

User-friendly layout

The utility impresses with its ease of use and clean feature lineup. Although there’s no support for a help manual, the dedicated parameters are intuitive, so you can decode the program’s features on your own.
A multi-tabbed environment is implemented for helping you define the schematic designs and carry out transient and AC simulations.

Importing/exporting options

idealCircuit gives you the possibility to import/export files from schematic items (IC file format), and copy the image to the clipboard so you can easily transfer it into other third-party utilities.

Create and test circuits

The application organizes the components that you can embed in your drawings with the aid of different categories, such as probes, diodes, transistors, amplifiers, sources, switches, and transformers.
You can make use of drag-and-drop actions for adding objects in the working environment or moving them to the desired position.
Plus, you can zoom in or out of the drawing, automatically reposition the objects in order to fit the screen, mirror or rotate elements to different angles, copy items so you can easily paste them, and delete or change the attributes of each object. You may also perform tests in order to verify the generated circuits.

Several configuration settings

You are allowed to the change background color of the schematic designer (black, white, or black and white), limit the maximum number of undo actions to a custom number, show or hide grid points, alter the font size and line width, as well as change the color of various elements (e.g. wire, ground, component, text, cursor, grid).
In addition, you can save the preferences to a file on your drive, so you can easily import data in your future projects.

Bottom line

All things considered, idealCircuit integrates only an essential feature pack for helping you create and test circuits, and is suitable especially for less experienced users. If you are looking for advanced features, you can have a look at NL5 Circuit Simulator, which includes more components and models than idealCircuit.