Useful Low Cost or Free Computer Programs for Engineering

please send me the programs to the following mail ID

senthil.ganesan@vijai.co.in

Excellent units conversion program which is free for ever:

http://www.katmarsoftware.com/uconeer.htm

A bit specialised but great electronic CAD (schematic capture) program:

http://tinycad.sourceforge.net/

And of course excellent free office suite:

http://www.openoffice.org/ The wp is much better than the more common alternative and includes export to pdf.

Randall thanks for the conversion link, been needing it.

I also recomend open office, for those of us too cheap for a full version of windows, the export as pdf is incredibly useful

now if I coul just figure out how to get rid of the nag box on the pic viewer [win office], for my email?

I've been turning my old records w/a bunch of freeware: http://www.snapfiles.com/

Audacity, mp3cut, Id3renamer, Itunes

not exactly engineering, but tunes seem to lube the process

Thanks for the links. I took a quick look at the tinycad website, but couldn't work out whether the package supports schematic-based hierarchical design - can you clarify this? Incidentally, the best* free SPICE-like simulation package that I have come across is LTSpice**. It has its own schematic capture package, but you may prefer to use one you are more familiar with.
*For reliability of simulation without sacrificing accuracy.
**Linear Technology will even support the product if you are using it to design a product that uses their own parts - but I've not (yet?) found support to be needed.

Sorry: no hierarchical design. Thanks for the LTSpice: I'll download it and try it next time I need to.

I should have said - the LTSpice user's group at groups.yahoo.com often gives pointers to features and methods that may not be obvious (at least some have not been obvious to me)

Fyz

Here's one I find useful. I like it anyways.. Nice when I don't have to be in the field and I'm working calculations at mt pc. And it's programmable like other graphing calcs.

http://www.graphcalc.com

_Lloyd_

Hi: another bit of information. In this place there is a good program for unit conversion:

http://joshmadison.net/software/convert/

Good news thanks

Here are a couple more useful on line sites in addition to the ones already given.

http://www.martindalecenter.com/Calculators.html

http://www.engineersedge.com/Design_Data.shtml

The following requires a free registration

http://machinedesign.partcommunity.com/PARTcommunity/Portal/machine_design

http://www.globalspec.com/?frmtrk=CR4digest

I have some others I'll add later.

Another good units convertor http://www.engnetglobal.com/tips/toolsapp/default.aspx

Anyone know how to bookmark a thread such as this one without having to post a reply?

....just go to the beginning (top) and click on subscribe!

D'oh......... thanks Andy!!!

John.

......its only because I needed it also recently and had the luck to find it, do not be upset with yourself please!

We all help each other with anything and everything!! I am sure that you will too! Have a great day.

Another openware software I found here in CR4 - an equation editor, friendly to use and cuts/paste the equations into whatever very easily. Makes your equations look like what they're supposed to look like!

mathcast.sourceforge.net/home.html

A small, powerful math program. Will run from a thumb drive. Free.

• Expression calculations with arithmetic, conditional, logical and bitwise operators
• Around 100 built-in mathematical, physical and conditional constants
• Around 60 built-in functions for Analysis, Arithmetic, Complex numbers, Hyperbolic, Integers, Probability, Numeral systems, Statistics, Trigonometry
• Define your own variables and functions for use in calculations
• Plot fully adaptable graphs, trace the plotted functions, save your graphs
• Decimal, binary, hexadecimal and octal numeral systems
• Complex number calculations
• Colored workarea
• Save and load sheets
• Orderly overview of all available functions and constants in the Functionstree
• A list with all defined variables and functions in the Memorylist
• Context-sensitive help and a detailed users guide

http://www.speqmath.com/

Thanks MRainey for speqMath,

Funny how some programmers seem to get the user interface simple and comprehensive at the same time: this is a beautiful example.

For handheld calculators: this ones not free and I don't know if $29 counts as cheap, but, the best calculator I've come across for the palm operating system is RPN from Russ Webb at http://www.nthlab.com . This is a Reverse Polish Notation calculator (like a lot of old HP ones).

I just wanted to thank everyone who posted or looked at this thread. It was the first thread I have posted and was somewhat worried that it wouldn't get a response. Also many thanks for those of you that shared links, some of which have downloaded and started to use. I was going to mention openoffice.org but forgot about it so I'm glad someone was more on the ball than I was.

Second someone mentioned Audacity which I downloaded a couple months ago have used for clipping sections of MP3's for ringtones, and messing around with the special effects. I like the program, and some interesting things can be done with it. One possible benefit is that it includes a tone generator which can generate pure tones from 1 Hertz to 30,000 kHz which I am planning on using for active noise control experiment I'm working on, although I am not sure the accuracy of the tones (going to have to do some experimenting). Also you have to download the "lame" encoder to save files as mp3's for anybody who downloads it (located on the same site as the program download).

Since I'm off on a tangent, If anybody knows of a file program which can convert windows media audio files to mp3 files I have been looking for one for quite a while and to no avail.

I-tunes

file program? not sure, but I've used it to imported 20hr wav discs w/I-Tunes

just make sure you have proper tags or it gets confusing.

One more, I recently became aware of GIMP, its suppose to be a free program similar to photoshop. http://www.gimp.org/ is the link to the source site, which has the source code for download, however a little internet searching will find and .exe file which actually runs and installs the program, where you don't have to mess around with compiling the source code (which isn't recommended unless you know what your doing). I downloaded it, and realized it was worthless to me, since I didn't know how to use any of it, but I don't know how to do anything in photoshop either and I have tried (something I've been meaning to learn but haven't had the time), so I would guess if you know one you can pick up the other. I did notice while I was messing around with GIMP I ended up with a few errors and the program had to shut down, I don't know if the program still needs some bugs fixed, or I was trying to do something which I shouldn't have.

"I ended up with a few errors and the program had to shut down, I don't know if the program still needs some bugs fixed, or I was trying to do something which I shouldn't have."

A well-written program shouldn't crash because of something the user does.

GIMP tutorial ("Grokking the GIMP") is at http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/

Given the level of publicly-available documentation of some relevant Windows OS and interface features, I would pose the following question: "Is it possible to write this sort of programme 'well' for the Windows environment?"; and possibly a supplement: "Is it possible to ensure that the programme will remain stable as the environment is updated?"

Those are legitimate questions, and I see your point. There are some programs I've used for years without a crash. That may or may not remain true after the next OS change.

Here's a quote from the author of the compiler I use to create Windows programs (he also writes Linux programs and is a Linux user). His Windows programs - IBasic Professional and Aurora - are two of those that never crash for me.

"And to answer your other question. Linux is worse for the programmer, always has been. It is dependency hell as there are hundreds of libraries that an application may depend on that are not included on all distributions. It is up to you to package these libraries into .deb or rpm distributions."

I'm not a program expert and I certainly don't feel qualified to push Linux - though there are theoretical advantages in being able to download exactly what you wish to use (I've sometimes thought that a compiler-generated check&download facility to be available at programme load would be welcome, but I don't know what other implications it might have).
My company uses both platforms, each in several flavours. I suppose it is "horses for courses". Other than IE, where you interact with all sorts of things, the packages we run almost never crash (so far...). Many of them run faster under Windows; but some of them still seem to slow down dramatically during long or multiple runs under XP (I haven't seen this problem running NT4).

For anyone interested in pumping systems, this is a quite usefull site with a free downloadable programme called PSIM (Pump System Improvement Modelling tool). www.pumpsystemsmatter.org

• Just as GIMP is an open-source raster graphics editing application, Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editing application. So Inkscape is similar to Illustrator, as GIMP is to Photoshop.
• There is a nice list of free CAD software at FreeCAD. Having used TurboCAD in the past, I found that their free (and slightly old) version of TurboCAD LE is convenient 2D CAD app for me. AllyCAD and SolidEdge 2D also look like good 2D CAD apps, but there are many others listed. If someone would like to install and test all of the CAD apps and pick a winner, I'm sure everyone else here would be very thankful. ;)
• Free 3D CAD software is much harder to find, but MINOS looks like a nice app.
• Finite Element Method Magnetics (FEMM) is a great free app for simulating and analyzing magnetic systems
• Perhaps many of you already know about Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Calendar, and Notebook, but these are great free tools for collaboration.
• I also consider the Firefox browser to be a great tool for researching technical info on the Web, especially with the search engine plug-ins like Google, Answers.com, GlobalSpec, and MatWeb. Firefox has lots of other great plug-ins, including one for Google Notebook and one for JetEye, another great collaboration tool.

I just remembered great 3D CAD package. Google's Sketchup

The first tutorial shows you (or used to) how to draw a house in about 5 minutes.

http://www.sketchup.com