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Useful software

In the course of your studies you will use a number of computer programs, some of which you will get from the ITMC. On this page we have collected software that we consider to be particularly useful. The latest information and instructions can be found in the ITMC's service portal.

Office365

All enrolled students of the TU Dortmund University as well as all employees can use the software package Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus for private use.1)for a provision fee of 4,99 Euro per year. The license entitles to a local installation on up to 5 devices (PC, tablet, Mac, iPad). Included are, among others:

  • Word
  • Excel
  • PowerPoint
  • Outlook

5 GB Cloudspace is also provided.

Important: Support is provided by the ITMC and a software provider, not by Microsoft itself!

MS Office 365


Sciebo University Cloud

Every student has 30 GB available in the Sciebo cloud, which you can add to your windows explorer by default.

Sciebo

Besides Sciebo, there is also a large market of commercial cloud service providers, which often provide some GB for free (Dropbox, Mega, GoogleDrive,...).


Matlab

One of the most important tools for you in your studies is Matlab. You will use it at the latest in the fourth semester. You can get a campus license from the ITMC. Matlab is a programming language optimized for matrix calculations. With SimuLink you can evaluate control block diagrams and signal flows.

Matlab Campus License


Windows

Windows licenses are also available in the service portal.

Windows


Conferences

The following video chat services are available to all students in a privacy compliant manner:

Not officially supported, not privacy compliant, but still popular:

Notes

For structured note-taking, there are several programs you can look at.

  • MS OneNote is suitable for taking notes on Windows devices.
  • Drawboard PDF is very robust for filling in digital PDFs such as experiment instructions.
  • GoodNotes is a go-to for all iPad users when it comes to different types of note taking.

Organization

Good self-organization is the be-all and end-all of studying. It can take a while until you find your routine. However, you can also find numerous apps that support you if you want to go beyond a classic to-do list.

  • Notion (project management & notes)
  • Trello (project management & notes)
  • Anki (digital flashcards)
  • Google (or other) calendar
  • DFN-Terminplaner (appointment survey)

Programming

There are many different editors for programming.

  • Eclipse (freeware).
  • MS Visual Studio (may be available in the service portal, but licensing changes from time to time).
  • PyCharm (freeware)
  • Atom editor (freeware)

Circuit simulation

If you want to simulate circuits, you can use e.g. LTspice, where you can observe the behavior of your components in the time and frequency domain. You can find numerous tutorials on the Internet.