ELEC 225, Fall 2009
Prof. Rich Kozick

Laboratory 1: Introduction to PSpice

Circuit designers use circuit simulation packages to determine the operation of a circuit. These packages allow testing of various designs without having to buy the hardware or physically build the circuit, thereby saving time and money. Of course, the results from a circuit simulation package are only as accurate as the device models that are used in the package.

This lab is an introduction to a particular package called SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuits Emphasis). In particular, we will use PSpice, which is a version of SPICE that runs on PCs.

The following online PSpice references are available to help you get started:

You will need to add three libraries: ANALOG.olb, opamp.olb, source.olb

Please do the following activities.

  1. Simulate the two circuits that are written on the board in the lab (a voltage divider and an op amp circuit).

  2. Challenge: (Please try this if you have time, and this problem is part of Homework 2.)
    Please solve Problem 2.31 in the text using PSpice and find the current i_delta, the voltage v_o, and the power of each element in the circuit. We analyzed this problem in class on Wednesday, Sept. 2.

    Dependent sources are indicated in PSpice with the symbols E, F, G, and H (in the ANALOG library), corresponding to the cases in Figure 2.2 of our textbook. An example of PSpice with dependent sources is available at
    http://www.tcc.edu/faculty/webpages/PGordy/Orcad/Depend.pdf You will need sources F and H for this problem.

Please record your results and notes about using PSpice in your lab notebook. No report is required for this laboratory, but please demonstrate each circuit simulation to the instructor.

Thank you.