Andy Sturman
Professional Design Consultant

Tell us a little about yourself ?

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How do you use Proteus in your working day ?

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I do a lot of work with smaller microcontrollers where the number of pins is small and JTAG is not an option. The Proteus VSM simulation is therefore a really important tool for me because I can test and debug my system in software.

For example, a customer who was 2000 miles away asked me to write some communication firmware. It wasn’t practical to ship me the hardware because it was too big. I used VSM to simulate and debug the firmware and then emailed him the code. He burned a part and was amazed that it worked the first time.

Once I'm through the design and test phase I also use the Proteus PCB tools for PCB layout.

3) What do you like most about the Proteus Design Suite ?

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It’s highly integrated. I can draw the schematic, simulate, lay out the board either manually or with the autorouter, generate the Gerber files, bill of materials, and visualization all from one program. Each part knows about the others.

The ability to simulate my entire system and single step the code saves me loads of time and is especially important with the little PIC10 devices where hardware debugging is all but impossible. This is a big timesaver for me and really helps me get things done.

On the PCB side, I like the visualization tool. Sometimes I can spot little things that I couldn’t otherwise. It’s also nice to be able to show my customer what the board is going to look like before getting it made.