Purpose: This paper seeks to give an outline about the geometric concept of electronic circuits, where the jump behavior of nonlinear circuits is emphasized. Design/methodology/approach: A sketch of circuit theory in a differential geometric setting is given. Findings: It is shown that the structure of circuit theory can be given in a much better way than by means of a description of circuits using concrete coordinates. Furthermore, the formulation of a concrete jump condition is given. Originality/value: In this paper, an outline is given about the state of the art of nonlinear circuits from a differential geometric point of view. Moreover, differential geometric methods were applied to two example circuits (flip flop and multivibrator) and numerical results were achieved. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.