The Apex Power Design Software Tool utilizes Microsoft Excel to crate a self-documenting spreadsheet program to help you simplify and automate the many painstaking calculations and graphical interpretations required to design power analog circuits. You can use Power Design to address a number of electrical considerations including power levels, loop stability, current limit, and frequency sweeps for PWM filters and loads.
Power Design is available as a linear tool, a PWM tool or in combination. Highlights include an Inductor Design sheet and an analysis tool for PWM filter components with a default parasitic calculator. The PWM tool also provides biasing and stability covering both voltage and current control topologies.
Need help specifying an amplifier or a heatsink? Use Power Design’s product selector tool by entering the desired volts, amps and frequency. This tool can also be used for heatsink selection and for determining air flow calculations based on thermal resistance and package requirements.
This friend combines lookup tables and formulas with the ability to calculate the specifics of your job. A wire table is fine, entering size, distance and amps to get voltage drop is better. This idea is carried over to circuit analysis, material properties, conversion of units, geometry and math solutions, and working with resistors, capacitors and inductors. It also has a few items for the model shop.
The Apex Precision Power library of SPICE models for linear and PWM amplifiers are readable by a wide variety of SPICE simulators. These SPICE models are provided below for download, or you can request the entire library on CD-ROM. The APEXLINEAR.ZIP file contains APEXLINEAR.LIB (a text file with most Apex Precision Power SPICE models for linear amplifiers) plus APEXLINEARPSPICE.ZIP and APEXLINEARBERKELEY.ZIP. These last two zip files contain text files for some models requiring different syntax for the two simulator types. The INTUSOFTSYMBOLS file is a .zip archive that contains a partial set of symbol files unique to Intusoft. TOPSPICESYMBOLS is a complete set of symbols for TopSPICE.
The Apex Precision Power library of PWM SPICE models are state average models for nine amplifiers. With no switching, these models run about one hundred times faster than the pulse-by-pulse macro models. These SPICE models are provided below for download, or you can request the entire library on CD-ROM. APEXPWM.ZIP is a .zip archive that contains apexpwm.txt, a versatile generic PWM Spice model. For details on how to use this model, see Apex Applications Note 33 “Spice Model and PWM Amplifier Applications.”
Need help with a specific circuit design question? You can tap into a wealth of power analog circuit design expertise by contacting the Apex Precision Power Applications Engineering Team. Request assistance with product selection, design suggestions, schematic review, and circuit debugging.
