There are a number of interesting tools in both the commercial and research/open source areas. While much of my work has been with various commercial packages, I have a number of open source packages installed. The open source tools are great for basic problems, experimentation, and a chance to look into the source code. Nothing like getting knee deep in code to really understand what is going on. I don’t intend to list all of them here, that’s already been well done on tcadcentral.com. instead I’ll focus on installation, and usage.