Abstract:

Digital design, representing the design of digital electronic circuits, is fundamental to fields like electronics or computer engineering. For this reason, it is studied from the first years of undergraduate studies and it is followed by other disciplines ensuring future professional specialization. The support of the Digital Design lecture includes laboratory and homework assignments and there are several software applications which candidate to fulfill the requirements of the task. We survey in this paper the existing digital circuit design programs which can be used to assist the undergraduate student in making the first steps in this domain. There are applications like National Instrument’s Multisim which are excellent instruments, but are expensive and includes features that the junior students don’t need or don’t understand. One can find free or even-source products which use gates to construct combinational and sequential circuits, helping the students not only to design, but also to simulate the functioning of their creations. The analysis includes the strong and weak points for the applications, taking into account features like interface, complexity and functionality, as well as pedagogical ones like their position on the learning curve or the user friendliness.

Keywords:

Logic Design, Digital Design, Digital Circuit Simulation.