Electric plug-ins are additional pieces of code that can be downloaded separately to enhance the system's functionality. At this time, these plug-ins are available:

- Bean Shell The Bean Shell is used to do parameter evaluation in Electric. Advanced operations that make use of cell parameters will need this plug-in. The Bean Shell is available here.
- 3D Viewer The 3D viewer lets you rotate the integrated circuit and view it as a three-dimensional interconnection of layers. Although the viewer is included with Electric, it disables itself if the Java3D package is not installed. You can get the Java3D package from Sun Microsystems or from The Java 3D Community Site.

To attach a plugin, it must be invoked from the command line by adding it to the classpath. For example, to add the beanshell (a file named "bsh-2.0b1.jar"), type:

`java -classpath electric.jar:bsh-2.0b1.jar com.sun.electric.Launcher`

On Windows, you must use the ";" to separate jar files:

`java -classpath electric.jar;bsh-2.0b1.jar com.sun.electric.Launcher`

Note that you must explicitly mention the main Electric class (com.sun.electric.Launcher) when using plug-ins since all of the jar files are grouped together as the "classpath".