In ECE 2 you will not be required to use a simulation program, but they can be very helpful for learning about circuits, testing designs or analyses, and even just drawing schematics for reports. 

There are now several PC-based circuit simulators on the market. Most are based on the SPICE simulation engine developed at UC Berkeley.  You can find a list of several simulators here.   Some of the vendors provide free student versions of their software, usually with some limitation on the number of components that can be simulated.

The ECE department does not endorse any particular product or differentiate between any product or its competitors.  However, we have purchased a license for MultiSim v9, and this program is installed on the computers in the ECE2 lab.  

Here is a zipped file that contains the program and installer: Click here to download the ZIP file (5.67 MB)...

There is good on-line help in the student edition, but it often refers to the User Manual.  If you really want to read further, here is the user-manual; it is a zipped PDF file:  Click here to download the instruction manual (1.49 MB)...