LTspice, a great program, but that UI!

None of that is *evidence* that providing simulators sells any parts at all, let alone, lots of parts. Its quite likely that it will improve sales a tad, but just how much is guesswork.

That is some evidence, in the legal sense, but without numbers, and reasons for the numbers, it don't mean what they said was accurate or even the truth. As I noted, what would you expect them to say. "LTSpice is a total loss to us".

When I was designing board level stuff, I would evaluate pretty every single semiconductor company for the equivalent part I was planning to design in. Its part of the process of being an engineer. You are going to try and get the best compromise of performance, cost and availability. It would be just insane to design in a part just because that was in the kit of your freebe sim tool. Like, you aren't going to check out any alternatives? This is the real world. I don't believe any competent engineer would do such a daft thing.

So, no, I don't believe that LTSpice makes much of a difference in sales.

-- Kevin Aylward

Maybe, maybe not. How do you know? What physical evidence is there of that? Your opinion is no better than John's.

Considering his statement, your reply is a bit lacking in logic, isn't it Jim?

He gave no indication that he knows MicroSim PSpice, so his statement is not necessarily "Monumental BS".

Engineering is expensive. Risk can be expensive. Performance can be valuable. Getting a product to market matters. There's more to engineering than minimizing the BOM cost.

There wouldn't be a tad of jealousy there, huh?

For us it is guesswork, a statistician with the capability to perfom experiments and see detailed figures would be able to put a number on it. said number would then be a trade secret.

It depends entirely on the expected production volumes doesn't it? There are also a lot of unique / niche parts.

I get to decide what the company is willing to pay, so that simplifies the process some.

But not many purchasing departments are going to challenge an engineer on his design choices.

We seem to have different definitions of "engineer."

Part of what I do is amuse myself and learn things. Sometimes I do things new ways, or use new parts, for other reasons than piece price.

Challenge them to a drag race too. And a fist fight.

But not a cook-off. You'd lose that one.

Sure, but one needs to step back a bit here, and examine reality.

Are you really claiming that a competent engineer is not even going to spend 30 mins on the web. Like *30 min* out of months of development costs, simply to check out if another suitable part might even exist?

No. I have given a lot of thought to what is the value of freebee stuff like this, and it is not a lot, imo. The reality is, and taking into account your valid comment in principle of minimising development time, its simple not a rational way to develop products to not do even the most minimal check of alternative parts. Its even usually a requirement to design, whenever possible, a product where you can second source parts.

So, no I don't believe that a competent engineer, using LTSice, will refuse to even go on the web for *5 minutes* to check if something else is available. Its utter nonsense to suggest that this wouldn't happen. So, LTSpice cannot possibly be a genuine *cause* to buy an LT part. The LT part will be compared to another part, and the then optimum chosen, and it wont matter whether LTSpice is there or not.

This is how advertising works.

The fundamental point of advertisement is to let the customer know that you actually exist. Period.

In 1985, if MicroSim did not advertise in magazines, no one would know about it. if Intusoft did not advertise in magazines, no one would know about it.

Once engineers know about them, they *WILL* technically evaluate *which* one suits them best. They don't go, oh, ok, I'll just take the first one I find. This is not selling perfume.

Today, we have Google. We can all discover TI, Analog Devices and LT, so the value of freebees, today, has been greatly diminished.

An engineering product is designed based on technical, objective considerations. Not even spending 5 bloody minutes looking for an alternative via Google is fantasy. I don't believe for a second that any engineer does this. Once alternatives are discovered, an engineer will evaluate them to see if they are a better option.

-- Kevin Aylward

Sure, but if it was unique to LT, then they would buy it because its unique to LT, LTSpice wouldn't matter .

-- Kevin Aylward

Yes that is something of a side issue although for most of the "unique" parts can be implemented with something else but may be more complicated to design. But for specialist applications where volumes are lower I can see the attraction of being able to drop in circuit block and have it "just work", and furthermore be able to immediately demonstrate and verify that with LTSpice.

Then if volumes of a high profit margin design do take off I can see it being a while before a tried and trusted, yet relatively expensive part is designed out.

For LTSpice to be of value to LT, it only has to generate a tad more than Mike's salary, lets guess that at $500k p.a :-)

-- Kevin Aylward

But you don't have four people dedicated to your business, one of whom is an excellent power supply designer. Do they come into Highland and teach an eight week power design course? ...and bring lunch? ;-)

Yes, that's *many* times our margin. A buck matters.

Sure. The nuber of feeders is never a concern for our production (it is for our CM but I never make it under their limit). The number of devices matters, of course, because it costs more to place a part than most parts cost.

;-)

My favorite part is "ideal opamp".

Nonsense. They sell parts because they've made it easy for customers to design their parts in.

It's a lot more than advertising. I understand that you're jealous of Mike's rock star status but do try to keep it reasonable. ;-)

Though they try... (they're trying to tell us that we can't use a particular capacitor).

My PPoE allowed purchasing to buy resistors from "anyone" but capacitor substitutions, had the be cleared by engineering. WHere I am now, no substutions aren't allowed without really expensive testing.

Thought it was a mere $8B.

Sometimes they take us out for sushi.

But I don't want a power design course, especially not eight weeks. Even I can get tired of sushi.

I use "e" for that.

I'm small time, the price difference for LT parts hardly matters. (Given the cost of box, switches, knobs, connectors, time etc.) It's nice that someone caters to the smaller customer, I hope some of that stays with the AD buy.

George H.

Yeah when is LT going to release "e" and how much is it? :^) GH

I don't recall saying that.

Resistors and caps and some ICs are multi-sourced, but not much of the good stuff is any more.

But if I get a good sim of an LTC part and it's not expensive, I just use it. Their stuff works and doesn't get randomly EOLd like Maxim.

Here's a 2-channel 1200 volt pulse generator.

(Nice layout, no? I did that one myself.)

I needed a 1400 volt supply, so I pulled up the LTC3803 sim, ran it, and it looked great so I specified the part and moved on to the hard parts. It worked just as predicted. (U17, tiny 6-pin bugger, cost $1.32.)

Was I a Bad Engineer?