Download Electric Now

That's right, Electric is free software, an official GNU package. You can download the full version of Electric right now.

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.


Download the latest "Java" version

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 20 megabytes in size, and the source distribution is 26 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...

GET THE GNU ELECTRIC BINARY RELEASE, version 9.07
GET THE GNU ELECTRIC SOURCE RELEASE, version 9.07

...from the main GNU FTP area now. If this server is busy, check the list of mirrors and find Electric locally.

For those who wish to examine the very latest source code, it can be found in a Subversion repository at GNU Savannah.

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 a GNU Electric distribution, you can download these extras (none of which are necessary):

You can also download the Static Free Software extras, which give you IRSIM (a simulator from Stanford) and a 3D animation controller: For more information, read the plugins manual page.

Finally, you can download additional circuitry examples that work with Electric.


Download the older "C" version

Electric used to be written in C, but was translated to Java in 2003. If you insist on the older, buggier, and uglier C code, read on (but don't ask for bug fixes...nobody supports this code).

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...

GET THE LAST "C" GNU ELECTRIC RELEASE, version 7.00

...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.