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Preliminary documentation, pre-release view
Introducing interactive electronics design
CuteStudio has created a modern, easy to use schematic capture, netlisting and integrated graphing technology that allows you to design and test your circuits, and learn about electronics.
SumOne combines our framework tools with a full, SPICE compliant integrated linear simulator, that has the following features:
- Integrated simulator - draws the graphs as they are computed
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Independent simulator (not based on SPICE code but using similar principles and formats)
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AC frequency sweeps (known as small-signal AC analysis
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DC sweep - sweeps a series of steady state DC computations with a variable source
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TR transient (time-domain) analysis (equivalent to an oscilloscope)
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Component sweeps with arbitrary parameters (meaning you can sweep many things at once)
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Monte-Carlo component tolerance analysis
You can draw your ideas straight in, press Simulate and examine your outputs rapidly appear. The interactive simulator displays the specified outputs as you watch. If you don't want to wait until the simulation has finished, just quit out and go around again.
Graphical measurements are done using the mouse, and complex mathematical expressions (based on regular simulator outputs) are readily plotted.
Electronic simulation: quick start
This section is a quick summary of operations to enable people to get started and run the supplied examples and start creating their own circuits. More detailed reference to particular operations is covered later.
The first thing to do it to familiarise oneself with the general GUI and system, and then try the tutorial below.
The Parts Bin
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This is where you select the component, and then draw it straight onto the circuit. You can use the cursor keys ← ↑ ↓ → to move about in the parts bin.
The supplied shapes in the Parts-Bin are not fixed, but can be easily modified. Double-click on the symbol in the Parts-Bin for the symbol editor - to edit these shapes.
The symbol editor is also used to define a shape for a regular circuit, prior to converting it to a sub-circuit. In this case, the symbol editor must be initiated from the FILE menu.
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TUTORIAL: a supplied circuit
This section is a step-by-step account of running a supplied circuit to give an idea of what the program does.
Opening the circuit
Firstly, open the FILE menu and Open the circuit called lowpass.gen.
The LOWPASS circuit should now be visible:
This is a simple low pass filter whose loss increases with frequency. Having got the circuit displayed on the screen is the first major step. Now SUMO must be instructed to simulate it.....
Go to the top of the screen, and press SIMULATE. This opens the SIMULATION menu, which is where all simulations in SUMO are controlled and launched from.
Now press SIMULATE .
The drawing of the circuit is now converted into a form suitable for the simulator (what is referred to as netlisting in the trade), and the simulator is started. With the built in SUMOL/SUMOS fusion simulator the results appear as they are calculated because it is linked to the graphical viewer.
For other simulators, the operation has to be run in batch mode, and results are plotted at the end of the simulation.
As the simulation progresses, graphs may be re-drawn to maintain traces within the graph bounds. To prevent graph autoranging for live simulations select the RANGING button in the OPTIONS menu, from the FILE menu.
Most graphing operations are available during simulation.
Viewing the output
Having now got some output from the simulation, we can now view and measure some of the graphs. See the GRAPHING documentation for that.
If you find everything covering everything else, you can use the tiling options in the Tools menu to tidy everything up for you:
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