March 5, 2012 -- CircuitLab today announced the public release of its suite of web-based electronics design tools, including the first web-based circuit simulator with the power and accuracy needed for board-level design tasks. CircuitLab brings the ease of envelope sketching to the notebook computer you carry around with you and combines it with the power of the web browser to let you simulate, refine, and then share your creations with other designers around the world.

CircuitLab's user interface puts easy-to-use, powerful tools at the hands of designers. A quick-access build box lets designers access basic circuit elements quickly, while allowing access to a wide assortment of non-linear elements, feedback elements, digital/ mixed-mode components, and custom drawing tools. Easy-wire mode lets designers wire up their circuits with fewer clicks and less frustration than conventional schematic capture tools. Mixed-mode circuit simulation with Spice-like models lets the designer quickly tackle a wide range of design tasks, from digital to analog, DC to VHF and beyond.

CircuitLab's user interface runs entirely in the web browser, providing instant cross-platform compatibility to Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux users, in contrast to most software EDA tools which are Windows-only. The custom-built JavaScript-based circuit simulation engine runs directly in web browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox without requiring any plug-ins, and takes advantage of recent improvements in browser performance to allow the simulator to rapidly solve circuits that generate hundreds or even thousands of simultaneous non-linear equations.

As a web-based platform for electronics design, CircuitLab is able to provide unique features that desktop-based EDA tools can not match. Every circuit has a unique URL, making it effortless to share with collaborators, or paste into an online forum post for discussion. CircuitLab users can also rapidly search through other users' publicly-posted circuits, find one with functionality they need, and immediately copy-and-paste the relevant circuit block into their own work.

Electrical engineering students and students in related fields are set to be the earliest adopters of CircuitLab. "As an educational tool, CircuitLab is so easy to use and its simulation capabilities so powerful that we think we'll see lecturers using it live in EE classes, something that hasn't really been possible with existing tools," said Humberto Evans, co-founder and developer of CircuitLab. "The tool also makes it simple for students to generate beautiful printed schematics for lab reports, and in-browser simulations provide Spice-like accuracy that will translate to successful prototyping and less frustration.

"The growing online community of electronics hobbyists can take the most advantage of the easy ability to share and collaborate," said Mike Robbins, co-founder and developer of CircuitLab. "If you look at any electronics forum online, it's normal to see scanned hand-drawn schematics, or static screenshots from various desktop tools. There's no reason why we shouldn't instead be sharing useful URLs that enable editing and simulation. Hobbyists who post a public CircuitLab URL can enable thousands of designers online to easily open their circuit, make a few changes, and share the new version."

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