3D circuit animation toolbox

Below are some ready-made 3D circuit animations. To make your own, or to view a wider variety of animations with more flexibility, see the section on the free 3D circuits animation toolbox for MATLAB .

To restart an animation, press the reload button on your browser.

Internet Explorer seems to run these animations slower than they are designed to run; Mozilla and Netscape work better.

Understanding the animations

Voltage is represented by vertical position; the z-axis. Nodes are also shaded in color to represent voltage. Red is positive, black is zero, and yellow is negative.
Current is represented by green arrows. The length of the arrow corresponds to the magnitude of currents. Observe how the lengths add up at a node to verify that KCL is being upheld.

There may not be arrows on all branches of the circuit where current is flowing. When current is not shown explicitly in some branch, you can usually figure it out from KCL.
What's making the voltage change? When you see the voltage of a voltage source change, you know that it is a time-varying voltage source, pre-programmed to change in the way you see it varying. Nothing connected to it can make a voltage source change its voltage--that's the definition of a voltage source.

The same holds for current sources and switches--if you see the current of a current source changing, it is because it was programmed or externally controlled to change over time as you see it doing. Or is you see a switch switching between on and off, it is again programmed or externally controlled to switch in that pattern.

However, diodes switch as a result of the applied current or voltage, and cannot be externally controlled or programmed. And if you see a change in the voltage across a current source, or a change in the current through a voltage source, that is also determined by the circuit, and cannot be externally controlled or programmed in the source.