1. Home
  2. Electronics Design
  3. Do Designers Do Spice Hopping?

Do Designers Do Spice Hopping?

Huhhh..another simulator to learn... First Microcap...then Circuitmaker 2000..then Electronics Workbench (and it's as rebirth as Microsim)...then Protel...then some misc magnetics progs..then Orcad.. :-P

Are designers doing this too...Call it spice hopping?

And now I'm checking out LTSpice and reading the documentation:

Taken from:

formatting link
"SwitcherCAD III is designed to be used by three different types of design engineers: those who know what they're doing, those who think they know, and those who are sure they know absolutely nothing about switching regulator design. The experienced designer needs a "what if" program that allows him to quickly alter aspects of a circuit to find an optimum design. The neophyte needs a cookbook approach that yields a reliable design based on the simplest of inputs. The "loose cannon" designer needs a program that will allow him to exercise his free will, but will be intelligent enough to alert him to fatal design flaws."

I really like the writing style.. "loose cannon" designer :)

D from BC

Reply to
D from BC
Loading thread data ...

For better or worse, this happens a lot.

Probably worse. The reason I have to do it is that a SPICE model for part X only runs in some commercial SPICE version Y, so if I gotta use that part in SPICE then I might think I need to use only that version Y of SPICE.

In real life, 90% of the time the reason they say it only runs in SPICE version Y is because that's the only place they tried it. Often with minor syntax changes it will run just as well in my favorite SPICE :-).

That doesn't mean the model is useful in any version of SPICE! Almost all the models even for jellybean parts are useless outside some really boring range of parameters where the part is perfectly linear, and you could do just as well (and a lot Faster and with much better Understanding) on the back of a napkin.

The place SPICE really is useful at is if you really honestly trust all the models, and for me there's a pretty long list of discrete parts where I know exactly where to trust the models. So there is zero reason to use any of those newfangled integrated circuits!

Tim.

Reply to
Tim Shoppa

That's what happened..Some newfangled IC's caught my attention. So I got sucked into LTSpice.. ("It's a trap.") All because I'm just trying to save time.... I'm attempting to dodge the time to learn spice file syntax changes and also to dodge the time creating macro models or equivalent circuits using all the basics. Hopping to another spice program seemed like a short cut.

Sometimes I think the more I use spice... the more I get blind and it becomes my walking stick :)

Thanks for the feedback.. D from BC

Reply to
D from BC

It's not as bad as it was in the late 80's/early 90's, where Universities were churning out "EE graduates" who had undergone an intense 4-year course in how to run a specific VLSI design software tool and nothing else.

I gotta admit, looking back 20 years it made sense, as that was what all the big semiconductor houses thought they needed to hire lots of. But it's more frustrating today than it was 20 years ago.

And I myself have carved a niche by being an expert in some really super-duper obscure software tools when what I really enjoy is not the tool but the results, but everyone's convinced that I'm the guy they have to hire just because I know tool X and have used it to do A, B, C, and D really well.

Sort-of reminds me of when I took a Chaucer class as an undergraduate, me a techie/science/engineering dweeb among a whole bunch of literature majors. When the professor was handing back the big term paper, he was making complimentary remarks about what he really liked in each student's work. When I got mine back, the comment was "nice printer!". (I had typeset it using LaTeX and some macros used extensively for writing Physical Review papers...)

Tim.

Reply to
Tim Shoppa

Didn't Chaucer write about one of the meetings of 'The English Society for Bestiality' and how they met up in a Pub to drink beers and talk tails?

DNA

Reply to
Genome

"talk tails" ??? Bwahahahahaha!

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.