Re: Free MultiSim

Why is that? LTspice works well in "wine", as does the latest Designspark sch/pcb suite. No M$ required. Had some frustration with Designspark initially, but figured out that it is pretty easy to edit their ".DSL" files to get what you want from a similar available component.

I bet LT Spice has wrecked the commercial circuit sim industry. It has also forced other IC vendors to provide free simulators, too.

Which has been both good and bad... TI and Analog Devices are both going to encrypted models which will only run on their own simulators (though TI's encrypted models will still run on PSpice... for now). ...Jim Thompson

Will that be like Sony trying to protect their beta format?

My experience with TINA going was watching it go off and do things unknown, combined with a problem doing a reallyl important simulation of TI's OWN products not working correctly, AND NEVER RESOLVED by anyone at TI [went to the original model writer, too] and having NEVER experienced a single long term problem that could not be resolved in LTspice, well, um...let's see, on one hand TINA does strange things, on the other LTspice is pretty open and has ALWAYS worked. Duh! which one? which one? too difficult to choose. Guess I can no longer buy TI parts. Don't even get me started on National's online simulator when trying to do a SMPS! Their guru couldn't solve the problem either. LTspice ran just fine, albeit snail's pace, at least got results. Let's see National's NO RESULTS, versus LTspice's slow results, how to choose, how to choose! So I can't buy National parts either. That leaves Maxim, but their data sheets are more like 'wish' lists than data sheets. [just my opinion, ducking head and running for cover]

For some reason TI's models are horrible table or poly driven nightmares, with convergence problems galore... and simulation results not remotely matching the data sheet numbers.

Almost as bad as that other famous brand complained about here regularly >:-} ...Jim Thompson

So if neither of them can provide everything you need for a product, you'll have to design without any of their products?

I wind up buying LTC parts, maybe more expensive ones, just because I can sim them in LT Spice. But I have had some of the models lie to me.

Maxim? NEVER BUY MAXIM!

On a sunny day (Wed, 20 Aug 2014 13:11:18 -0700) it happened Bill Martin wrote in :

Does that thing run in wine? wine crashes my Slackware X server... It runs OK on an older Debian version. Maybe I have a bad version of wine 'edited' by MS. So for wine I boot an older PC with a debian based system (grml). Yes LTspice works here too in wine. I even have Xilinx webpack running in wine (old version).

On a sunny day (Wed, 20 Aug 2014 13:17:31 -0700) it happened Jim Thompson wrote in :

Just buy elsewhere.

TI is easy AD may be a bit more difficult.

So that's why Bob Pease hated simulations so much.. or maybe it was the other way around---he demoralized their simulation team so much with his sniping that they gave up trying.. what was first, the chicken or the egg??

I wish there was some sort of Spice Neutrality movement to get manufacturers to sign on to an open standard. Or maybe a military require to provide models in some format. I know it won't happen but I can dream.

National Semi models are fine. It's the TI-TI ones that are such crap.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

It used to be a problem, I managed to get Designspark 5.x to work by installing into an old XP box, then moving the install directory tree over to Linux/Wine. Think that means it's the installer that is funky... Latest version of DS installed just fine on Mint 17 with it's Wine distribution, which is never the latest it seems.

There is an open standard. Its called a Spice3 .subckt. Its existed for 30+ odd years. Unfortunately, there seem to be few and far between that actually know/want/can be bothered how to write decent models

The poly syntax is particular annoying. It should never be used, imo. The Spice3 B general v/i source has a simple either way conversion to PSPice/LTSpice, so either one is a good general choice.

Kevin Aylward

.>Will that be like Sony trying to protect their beta format?

Er... ahmmm. the reason is pretty obvious...

Kevin Aylward

Yes for board level design. For IC design I am very happy having my employer pay $6figure per year for a suite of Cadence tools. Well worth the money in view that there is, essentially, nothing else available that does all that it does.

Kevin Aylward

That works with Mathcad 2001i as well.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Thanks! That's good to know. I'm still keeping the installation CD in fireproof box, though. ;-)