123D Circuits

An online service for designing electronic circuits and printed circuit boards, including support for the Arduino hardware and computing platform.

123D Circuits offers a range of useful features for circuit design. After entering your account information, you can choose to create new circuits, add components, or import circuits from Eagle . Board sizes are customizable, and free text placement and silkscreen printing are supported. However, 123D Circuits’ main feature is its Arduino emulation , with support for I/O boards and the ability to edit program code visually from the browser.

Circuit simulation in a beautiful graphical editor is accomplished by placing wires and required components on a bradboard and then connecting them to a virtual processor. Diagnostics, analysis, and interactive simulation of circuit operation in real time are also available.

The component library is currently limited, with only models of basic components available: diode, LED, capacitor, inductor, resistor, transistor, as well as a button, potentiometer, DC motor, multimeter, and a few others. A powerful yet simple editor allows you to add new radio components as needed for your project.

After completing the graphical workflow, the program automatically generates a schematic diagram of the device being designed and suggests a customized layout for the components on the printed circuit board (with editing capabilities). 123D Circuits also creates a Bill of Materials (BOM) and offers the option to order multilayer printed circuit boards. Collaboration on projects is possible using a unified component library. Support for Autodesk’s Instructable resource is also available.

Among the shortcomings of this software is its limited functionality, which is only suitable for beginning radio enthusiasts and students. Furthermore, some users report a significant discrepancy between circuit simulation results and actual values.

You can get started with the 123D Circuits virtual development environment after registering on the official website. Detailed instructions for using the product are available in the “Help” section of the same website. The free version of the program offers an unlimited number of public schematics (available to anyone). For a $12 monthly fee (the hobbyist option), the developer gets access to five personal schematics and a 5% discount on printed circuit board orders. There’s also a professional plan, priced at $25 per month, which provides a 5% discount on PCB orders and an unlimited number of personal schematics.

123D Circuits is the latest creation from the renowned company Autodesk. The service is part of a line of products designed for radio enthusiasts and united under the 123D brand. Autodesk is currently a leading developer of software used in various fields. The company’s primary focus is visualization, modeling, behavior analysis, and on-screen testing of designs during the early stages of design. Among Autodesk’s most well-known products are Autodesk 3ds Max, AutoCAD, Autodesk Alias, Autodesk Inventor, and Autodesk Maya. The company is headquartered in San Rafael, California, USA, and has an official representative office in Russia.

The 123D Circuits service does not support a Russian-language interface and is available only in English.

The web application is not demanding on end-user workstation hardware. A stable, high-speed internet connection is sufficient. Although 123D Circuits is recommended for creating electronic circuits of medium to high complexity, some stages of the process (specifically, creating a new project, simulating, and analyzing) take quite a long time.

Using the service is free.

Official website of 123D Circuits: http://123d.circuits.io

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