[sdiy] Circuit Simulators

[Jay Schwichtenberg]

Personally I think all EDA/CAD type SW tools have their idiosyncrasies, 
warts and good points. You just got to pick something and learn it. For 
me that is LTspice and KiCad.

One thing that has helped me become more efficient is reprogramming the 
hot keys. Typically the packages come with these setup more to associate 
the operation with the action. Once you've established a work style or 
flow for yourself think about how you can optimize that by reprogramming 
the hot keys. A good example (that I use) is put the more common 
operations I do on keys which don't use shift/control/alt on keys that 
are not on my mouse hand. That way I can do stuff without having to move 
my mouse hand to the keyboard and back.

One major thing to keep in mind when using Spice or PSpice for 
simulation is it is just that. You are using component models that range 
from simple (ideal) to complex and how detailed of a simulation you do 
all effect the out come. I did contract work and have worked a number of 
different places and in a number of different areas. One place I worked 
there were a number of world class engineers. We were working on 
something that was targeted to work up to 10GHz and the guys were 
simulating everything. There was the circuit per say, pcb, flex pcb, 
cables, connectors, .... This got them close but there were still a 
number of issues to be resolved and in the end after every thing was 
done and validated it worked up to 15 GHz. So bottom line (especially at 
the level we're talking about here) we're looking at a tool that will 
show us an ideal model. So keep that in mind. Things like noise, edge 
cases, obscure operation will probably not show up in your simulations.

Jay S.