AW: AW: gnuplot ! FOR WINDOWS!!!!

[Haible Juergen]

	> ... I knew this was going to happen.

I knew there would be some response like this (;->)

	>Of course I don't use gnuplot as a circuit simulator.  I use it
before I
	>actually think about the implementation.  Just to verify that the
raw
	>idea, or concept is correct, that math was done correct.  I can toy
	>with parameters, see the parameter dependence, before going too far
	>into detail.
	>
	>If your concept is wrong, there is no need to think about
implementations.
	>
	>Using a circuit simulator means that you allready must have a 1:1
	>representation of your circuit.

If this would be the case, I would totally agree with you.
But a modern simulator is not like the original Spice anymore.
You have a lot of these basic buiding blocks like exponential
functions, pole / zero definitions, and anything else you can think
of. So I make the rough concept at a completely abstract
level, too. The advantage over a simple tool like gnuplot is that
you can compose your mathematical functions graphically,
with "black boxes" wired together just like a circuit. And you
have much more powerful postprocessing tools, parameter
sweeps and so on.

When your basic concept (not a single electronic component yet !)
works, you can start to exchange certain blocks with schematics
of real circuits. And simulate the abstract parts and the circuit
parts together in one go. 

On a commercial version of PSpice (or IS-Spice, or similar simulators),
you can go on to simulate the whole circuit with electronic components
as a last step - on the free demo versions you cannot do that normally
because of limited size of the circuit. But that is not such a bad thing.
I don't trust a Spice simulation completely, anyway - done it too long
not to know the limitations.

So it is exactly this concept level where I see the main application
for a free demo version circuit simulator. This, and one step beyond,
like using a 2N2222 instead of the transistor of my choice. When
I want to change to a BC550, that's where the demo version says "no".
Fair enough, that's the point where I stop trusting the simulator anyway,
and where it's good to go to breadboard.

I think everybody has develloped his personal favorite way to work.
I just wanted to point out that the free PSpice version can do this
concept level stuff, too, and that I personally like it much better than
Gnuplot.

(I'm using Gnuplot as post processor for in-house programs that
need an easy and standardized data format, btw.)

JH.