Re: Smith Chart Amusements

On Mon, 26 May 2008 17:57:43 -0700, "Joel Koltner"
<zapwireDASHgroups@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Hammy" <spamme@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uvem34h6je2h29higb976783fc6t2cskaq@xxxxxxxxxx
I forgot we used Ansoft seranade in school.They offer free student
versions here.

Of the "big RF guys" (Agilent, AWR, etc.), Ansoft is generally considered by
have the most powerful free software available.

Seems like they no longer do Searanade,now its just Designer.They are
good to tinker around with.

A German fellow has a very good tutorial on it here:
http://www.elektronikschule.de/~krausg/

Agilent also makes good RF CAD
but you have to mortage your house for it;)

The salesguy I once talked to regarding Agilent's ADS said that pretty much no
one actually buys it anymore... instead companies forego buying, say, a new
car or two each year instead paying for a software lease. :-)

Microwave Office -- while certainly not cheap (still a car every couple of
years...) -- is a far better value than ADS, IMO, and definitely makes more of
an effort to be "open" than everyone else. Ansoft's "value proposition" is
that *if you were actually going to license a whole lot of modules from AWR or
ADS anyway* they usually end up being the cheapest. Agilent of course also
has Genesys that they acquired from Eagleware... a rather lower-featured
offering than ADS, but still powerful and a good value for the money... and
apparently the idea that if you get to the point of Genesys not having enough
features/power for you (i.e., you decide your circuit works so well you really
would like to turn it into an IC), there's a ...supposedly... clean-cut
upgrade path to ADS once you hand over that blank check to the Agilent
salesman.

---Joel

Thanks for the tutorial link Joel.

I dont know why they don't lower the price of CAD packages,they would
probably sell much larger volume.
.

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