The Proteus Design Suite is a proprietary software tool suite used primarily for electronic design automation. The software is used mainly by electronic

design engineer A design engineer is an engineer focused on the engineering design process in any of the various engineering disciplines (including civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, textiles, aerospace, nuclear, manufacturing, systems, and structural ...

s and technicians to create

schematic A schematic, or schematic diagram, is a designed representation of the elements of a system using abstract, graphic symbols rather than realistic pictures. A schematic usually omits all details that are not relevant to the key information the ...

s and electronic prints for manufacturing printed circuit boards. It was developed in

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...

, England by Labcenter Electronics Ltd and is available in English, French, Spanish and Chinese languages.

History

The first version of what is now the Proteus Design Suite was called PC-B and was written by the company chairman, John Jameson, for

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

in 1988. Schematic Capture support followed in 1990, with a port to the Windows environment shortly thereafter. Mixed mode SPICE Simulation was first integrated into Proteus in 1996 and microcontroller simulation then arrived in Proteus in 1998. Shape based autorouting was added in 2002 and 2006 saw another major product update with 3D Board Visualisation. More recently, a dedicated IDE for simulation was added in 2011 and MCAD import/export was included in 2015. Support for high speed design was added in 2017. Feature led product releases are typically biannual, while maintenance based service packs are released as it is required.

Product Modules

The Proteus Design Suite is a Windows application for

schematic capture Schematic capture or schematic entry is a step in the design cycle of electronic design automation (EDA) at which the electronic diagram, or electronic schematic of the designed electronic circuit is created by a designer. This is done interact ...

simulation A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the s ...

, and PCB ( Printed Circuit Board) layout design. It can be purchased in many configurations, depending on the size of designs being produced and the requirements for microcontroller simulation. All PCB Design products include an autorouter and basic mixed mode SPICE simulation capabilities.

Schematic Capture

Schematic capture in the Proteus Design Suite is used for both the simulation of designs and as the design phase of a PCB layout project. It is therefore a core component and is included with all product configurations.

Microcontroller Simulation

The micro-controller simulation in Proteus works by applying either a hex file or a debug file to the microcontroller part on the schematic. It is then co-simulated along with any analog and digital electronics connected to it. This enables its use in a broad spectrum of project prototyping in areas such as motor control, temperature control and user interface design. It also finds use in the general hobbyist community and, since no hardware is required, is convenient to use as a training or teaching tool. Support is available for co-simulation of: * Microchip Technologies PIC10, PIC12, PIC16, PIC18, PIC24, dsPIC33 microcontrollers * Atmel AVR (and

Arduino Arduino () is an open-source hardware and software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices. Its hardware products are licensed under ...

), 8051 and ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers * NXP 8051, ARM7, ARM Cortex-M0 and ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers *

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globa ...

MSP430, PICCOLO DSP and ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers *Parallax Basic Stamp, Freescale HC11, 8086 microcontrollers

PCB Design

The PCB Layout module is automatically given connectivity information in the form of a

netlist In electronic design, a netlist is a description of the connectivity of an electronic circuit. In its simplest form, a netlist consists of a list of the electronic components in a circuit and a list of the nodes they are connected to. A network ...

from the schematic capture module. It applies this information, together with the user specified

design rules In electronic design automation, a design rule is a geometric constraint imposed on circuit board, semiconductor device, and integrated circuit (IC) designers to ensure their designs function properly, reliably, and can be produced with accepta ...

and various design automation tools, to assist with error free board design. PCB's of up to 16 copper layers can be produced with design size limited by product configuration.

3D Verification

The 3D Viewer module allows the board under development to be viewed in 3D together with a semi-transparent height plane that represents the boards enclosure. STEP output can then be used to transfer to mechanical CAD software such as

Solidworks SolidWorks is a solid modeling computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) application published by Dassault Systèmes. According to the publisher, over two million engineers and designers at more than 165,000 companies w ...

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartere ...

for accurate mounting and positioning of the board.

References

Circuits Gallery (October 2014)
"Arduino and Proteus VSM"
Future Engineers Proteus VSM project

Online Training with Microchip and Proteus VS
"Get Started with MPLAB® X IDE and Microchip Tools"
Elecnote Hobby Project
"Electronic circuits based on PIC microcontrollers and Arduino boards"

External links

Official siteDiscussion Forums
{{CAD software Computer-aided design software for Windows Computer-aided design software Electronic design automation companies Electronic design automation software 1988 software