|
|
ViPEC was inspired by the Touchstone (tm) circuit simulator from HP EEsof. The original Windows version supported most of the Touchstone functions except the circuit optimiser utility. Due to its easy to use interface and stability it quickly gained popularity with the RF engineers at the University of Stellenbosch and has been used in the development of several of the communications subsystems on the SUNSAT micro-satellite.
During the course of 1998 it was decided to completely rewrite ViPEC and to use the opportunity to port it to Unix platforms as well. ViPEC was developed using the Qt multi-platform C++ GUI toolkit from Troll Tech and it was decided to base the project on the Open Source development model, making the source code for ViPEC freely available. ViPEC is distributed under the GNU public license.
We've had numerous requests to port the Qt version of ViPEC to the Windows platform, but this required a substantial financial investment since the Windows version of the Qt libraries and the C++ compiler is not free. Recently we have decided to bite the bullet and purchase the necessary development tools to be able to compile ViPEC on the Windows platform. In order to recover some of our investment in the Windows development tools, we will most likely charge a small amount for the Windows version of the software. ViPEC will remain free of change for platforms with free tools. Of course donations and sponsors are also welcome.
The only way we can improve ViPEC is if we can get feedback from the users of ViPEC. Please send us any comments, suggestions or bug reports.
ViPEC is written by Johan Rossouw and Eugene Jansen.
Have a look at some screenshots of ViPEC in action.
Special thanks to SourceForge which is hosting this web site for free.