Logisim – A Graphical Tool for Designing and Simulating Digital Logic Circuits | Hacker News Reader

Logisim – A Graphical Tool for Designing and Simulating Digital Logic Circuits

cburch.com

Very cool tool. Almost 2 decades ago, I learnt Principles of Digital Design in the university using EWB (Electronics Workbench), then known as Multisim.

It's Windows only. Then a friend pointed me to Logisim, which also runs well on Linux. Unfortunately, the development was suspended, which lead to various forks like: - https://github.com/lbulej/fork-logisim-evolution - https://github.com/Logisim-Ita/Logisim - https://github.com/logisim-evolution/logisim-evolution

How does LogiSim compare to KiCad or LTSpice?

LogiSim is for simulating digital logic only.

LTSpice is for simulating analog circuits, particularly power electronics.

KiCAD is a schematic design and layout tool, it's for designing printed circuit boards.

So it's a bit of an apples:lettuce:walnuts comparison. They're all for different categories of thing, though all deal with some sort of circuit in some sense.

Since you seem knowledgable on the subject, do you know of any open source or cheap integrated circuit simulators and/or design tools?

LTSpice for windows. Spice3f5/ngspice for unix

LTSpice/NgSpice can accurately simulate digital logic in custom-made integrated circuits? Can one achieve close-to-professional results?

If you have good models, yes.

Oh wow, I never thought I would see this again!

I learned logic gates using this, and even made a video game out of a grid of LEDs. You were a car that had to dodge oncoming traffic by switching between columns.

EDIT: After trying it, it's not the one I remember.

I used the very similar program LogicSim http://www.tetzl.de/java_logic_simulator.html#download

Runs perfect still. Just make sure you have java version 1.4 and up ;)

Looks like development was suspended back in 2014. There seems to be a recently maintained fork: https://github.com/logisim-evolution/logisim-evolution

I have another fork that is still (mostly) maintained and used as well: https://github.com/kevinawalsh/logisim-evolution

The REDS-HEIG version you link to has more development activity, support for a wider variety of FPGAs, and a few other advanced features. My version has some neat features not found in REDS-HEIG fork, and usually aims to keep the interface more beginner-friendly and streamlined for use as student's first-contact with digital circuits.

Logisim links:

http://www.cburch.com/logisim/links.html

7400 series Logisim library from Ben Oztalay (ZIP, uncompressed):

http://www.cburch.com/logisim/download/7400-lib.zip

7400 series Logisim library from Technological Services Company (ZIP, uncompressed):

http://www.cburch.com/logisim/download/7400-series-rev1.zip

I Designed My Own 16-bit CPU:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt0JfmV7CyI

Berkeley uses Logisim for its computer architectures class. One of the projects was to create a basic cpu within Logisim. Really the first time that I saw how we go from code to hardware.

We used a fork of Logisim for the computer architecture courses (CS 2110/2200?)at Georgia Tech as well. It was called Brandonsim[1] after the hyper productive Head TA Brandon who adapted it for our courses.

[1] https://github.com/TricksterGuy/Brandonsim

I love logisim. I used it on a course called "Digital Systems" in undergrad. It was one of my first CS courses - I had a project to create a digital calendar (it displayed time of day, day, month and year) and had so much fun learning to use it. Got to play with all sorts of quartz crystals, latches, flip-flops, etc.

In the end, it was so exciting getting it all working - I even implemented leap years (for february et al). Such a great tool to learn about circuit design!

I took an intro course at uni in digital circuit design, which was part of the core CS courses. We used logism for the pre-labs, and then implemented the circuits on bread-boards

It ended up being one of my favourite courses of all my undergrad courses

We are still using it! Laboratory course of Computer Architecture I (B.Sc. Computer Science). Still the best tool around to learn your first steps in digital design.

EveryCircuit is also an alternative that focuses on circuits in general, not only digital ones

Ah Logisim, brings back fond memories of creating a RISC-V CPU for CS61C at UC Berkeley.

That’s cool they switched CS61C to RISC-V.. we did a MIPS CPU (although maybe they are similar now?)

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