Products:
Software
Code
Libraries
Documentation
You can run Electric instantly, just
click here.
This uses Java Web Start, which downloads necessary files and then runs Electric.
It takes longer to start when first run or when new releases of Electric are made available,
but starts quickly at other times because the downloading is already done.
That's right, Electric is free software!
You can download Electric source code from the web.
There is no better way to get to know a CAD system than to use
it for a while.
Now you can use it at no charge!
If you like it, keep it!
If you don't, you've lost nothing.
Why are we doing this?
Because we believe that software should not be proprietary, and we want everyone to be able
to use Electric.
The Java distribution consists of a single ".jar" file that will run on any platform with Java 1.6 or later (available from Oracle or Apache Harmony). You can get a ".jar" file with or without source code (the source version is larger). Both versions have the built-in user's manual, supporting libraries, and binary code, so they are ready to run.
The binary distribution is 19 megabytes in size, and the source distribution is 24 megabytes in size. For specific information about running Electric on your system, read the setup manual page.
The distributions are located on the Free Software Foundation (GNU) web pages. You can read about downloading GNU Electric there, or you can...
...from the main GNU FTP area now. If this server is busy, check the list of mirrors and find Electric locally.
Due to copyright restrictions, GNU is unable to distribute those parts of Electric that come from external sources. Therefore, these facilities must be downloaded separately. After downloading GNU Electric distribution, you can download these extras (none of which are necessary):
- Bean Shell A package for evaluating Java expressions and scripts.
- Jython A package for evaluating Python scripts.
- Scala A package for evaluating Scala code.
- Java3D Enables 3D display.
- Java Media Framework Enables animation capture of the 3D display.
Finally, you can download additional circuitry examples that work with Electric.
Electric used to be written in C, but was translated to Java. If you insist on the older, buggier, and uglier C code, read on.
The C source code can be compiled and run on UNIX (all variants), Macintosh (system 7 or higher), and Windows (9x/ME/NT/2000/XP). In addition, the distribution includes the user's manual (in HTML) and supporting data files (libraries, samples, etc.)
The "C" GNU Electric distribution is about 4 megabytes in size. It is a UNIX "tar" format file that has been "gzip"ed. For specific information about getting "C" GNU Electric running on your system, read the installation manual pages for UNIX, Macintosh, and Windows.
The distribution is located on the Free Software Foundation (GNU) web pages. You can read about downloading GNU Electric there, or you can...
...from the main GNU FTP area now. If this server is busy, check the list of mirrors and find Electric locally.
Due to copyright restrictions, GNU is unable to distribute the IRSIM simulation engine, the Lisp language interpreter, and other extensions. Therefore, these facilities must be downloaded separately. After downloading the GNU Electric distribution, these Static Free Software extras can be found here.
Please note that these free distributions are controlled by the GNU General Public License (GPL), which requires you to make your source changes freely available when you redistribute the system.