Proteus Professional

Overview

Proteus is the package that made circuit simulation practical for people who are not full time analogue engineers, because it does the one thing most simulators do not: it runs your actual firmware inside the simulated microcontroller, wired to simulated peripherals, on a schematic you drew. Blink an LED, drive a display, talk to a sensor over I2C, watch the bus traffic, all before a board exists and without a scope on the bench.

Around that sits a complete design flow. Schematic capture with a large component library, an integrated SPICE engine for the analogue side, a digital simulator for the logic, and a PCB layout tool with autorouting, design rule checking and 3D board visualisation. This build is posted with the licensing handled, so the component libraries, the simulation models and the layout module are all present without the node limits that the restricted editions apply.

Schematic capture and simulation

Drawing a schematic here is conventional, with hierarchical sheets, buses, net labels and a library that covers the common passives, discretes, logic families and a very large set of microcontrollers. Where it separates from a drawing tool is that every component carries a simulation model, so the schematic is executable the moment it is complete.

The simulator is mixed mode, meaning an analogue front end and a digital back end coexist on the same sheet and the interface between them is handled for you. Virtual instruments include an oscilloscope, logic analyser, signal generator, counter timer, and protocol analysers for I2C, SPI and serial, which between them cover most of what a bench would give you. Traces can be probed anywhere on the sheet without adding a test point.

Running firmware in the simulation

This is the feature that sells the package. Compile your firmware, point the microcontroller part at the hex or elf file, and the simulation executes the real instruction stream. Peripherals respond, timers run, interrupts fire, and a display part draws what the code writes to it. Source level debugging is available with breakpoints and variable inspection while the surrounding circuit keeps running.

The practical value is in the failure cases. A pull up that is missing, a pin configured as input when it should be output, a bus that is being driven by two devices at once, these show up immediately and visibly rather than after a board comes back from the fabricator. For teaching and for prototyping this shortens the loop enormously.

PCB layout

The layout side takes the netlist straight from the schematic and keeps the two synchronised in both directions. Multi layer boards with plane layers, differential pairs, length matching and controlled impedance are all supported, and the design rule checker runs continuously rather than as a separate step you forget to do.

Autorouting is available and is reasonable on simple boards, though as always the router will not save a bad placement. Output covers Gerber, ODB, drill files and a pick and place list, plus a 3D view that can be exported for mechanical checking against an enclosure. The 3D view catches the classic mistake of a connector that faces the wrong way about a week earlier than a photograph of the assembled board would.

Who this is for

Students and teaching labs, because a whole class can breadboard without hardware. Firmware developers who want to start before the board arrives. Hobbyists designing a small board who would rather not learn three separate tools. And professional engineers doing quick feasibility work, though for large boards a dedicated high end layout package still has more room.

The learning curve is gentle by the standards of the field. If you have drawn a schematic anywhere before, you will be simulating within an hour. Layout takes longer, mostly because layout always does.

What you get

• Schematic capture with hierarchical sheets and a large parts library
• Mixed mode analogue and digital simulation on the same schematic
• Firmware execution inside simulated microcontrollers
• Source level debugging with breakpoints while the circuit runs
• Virtual oscilloscope, logic analyser and protocol analysers
• Bidirectional netlist synchronisation with the layout tool
• Multi layer PCB layout with planes, differential pairs and length matching
• Continuous design rule checking
• Autorouting with manual override
• Gerber, drill, ODB and pick and place output
• 3D board visualisation with mechanical export

Inside the archive

• Proteus Professional 9.1 SP2, offline installer
• Full component and simulation model libraries
• PCB layout module with autorouter
• 3D visualisation module
• Sample designs covering common microcontroller families
• Readme with the install order for this repack

System requirements

Installing it

1. Unpack the archive to a path without spaces.
2. Disable real time protection before starting, the licensing module is patched.
3. Run setup as administrator and install the full library set rather than the minimal one.
4. Apply the licensing step from the readme before first launch.
5. Open a sample design and run the simulation once to confirm the models loaded.

Mirrors

Release history

Questions about this release

Comments

Comments are read before they appear. If a build stops working, say so here and it gets rebuilt rather than quietly left up.