EAGLE and simulation

LTspice is a good and free simulator. I still haven't found an Eagle importer :-( Stef Mientki

Well, you aint been looking very hard.

B2 Spice,

one of er.. my competitors...can input Eagle no problem.

Kevin Aylward B.Sc. snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture, Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

"There are none more ignorant and useless,than they that seek answers on their knees, with their eyes closed"

's.freenews: snipped-for-privacy@news.east.earthlink.net

I should have been more precise: "I still haven't found an Eagle importer for LTspice (also called SwitcherCAD) :-( "

As I'm used to LTspice / SwitcherCAD, and only use it seldom, I don't want to try another package.

In selecting a tool, I always want to try it first, that's why I skipped B2 right away ;-)

Stef Mientki

With the caveat that I haven't spent much time with it, my first impression of LTSpice is that I don't get on with the user interface. The wire drawing works well - I like the full-screen cursor (and the fact that it uses dashed lines), but working with the circuit seems cumbersome. For example, you have to click 'move', 'drag' or 'delete' to be able to select a component that you want to *rotate*. Why not just have the rotate command ungreyed and let the user select the component to rotate?

The EAGLE interface isn't particularly intuitive either, but isn't so bad once you get used to it being strictly verb/noun. LTSpice is similar, but seemingly with extra work, at least in places, to do basic editing tasks. In a Windows world, where noun/verb is the de-facto paradigm for on-screen object manipulation, it would be nice if these tools were compliant with that.

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Melodolic Spielberg

You can try it, but it's a time-limited demo - does the full version for five days, then becomes the light version for a while before expiring. A self-destruct demo isn't what I'm after, though...

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Melodolic Spielberg

's.free

Yes, but it's a time-limited demo. I'd rather compromise with a reduced feature set, provided it can accommodate my newbie/hobbyist tinkerings.

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Melodolic Spielberg

my collegaes would kill me if they read my opinion ;-)

The majority of the software developers from high to low, makes the following mistakes:

1. they don't listen what the user wants, but they design a interface which suites them personally the best and which gives them the possibilities to use "new" tricks and which will keep them the "one-eye in the land of blinds". Above that, what they call "new", I call "old", because all of that crap has already be done by others, in other words they are proud they can repeat to produce things that other humans already have produced (isn't that the definition of a monkey ;)

1. the intuitive user interface is fixated by the definition of M$, which holds the whole world from introducing real new concepts (like Dasher). The only one at the moement who is trying to launch new concepts is Google. So may be in a few years it's Google intead of M$, who dominates what's intuitive ;-)

btw, I use also Orcad V7, 1995, which has a much better user interface than Eagle (in fact a bad shell around a DOS command line tool)/ LTspice. And here again the same story, Eagle has become very popular for hobby and small firms, and thereby has become the defacto standard.

Maybe KiCAD, very good looking open source schematic / layout package, can bring the change in this sector of the market.

cheers, Stef Mientki

Nothing wrong with developing new ways of doing stuff, or coming up with special procedures if a tool/task demands it, but there has to be some sort of standard for general use, otherwise people would constantly have to learn new usage paradigms (see: bad old days of DOS :). Some part of what makes something intuitive is sheer familiarity with it - Windows has a standard interface paradigm that everybody is used to, so a Windows app which is compliant with that paradigm will be easier to use (or get started with, at any rate).

And it shows. I've used DX Designer occasionally (to edit schematics according to instructions), and that feels like another dodgy DOS port with a ropey interface.

I get the impression that there's a pretty decent tool behind the dodgy EAGLE interface. I'd have to say that, if the board size restriction of the freebie version became an issue, I'd be looking long and hard at the competition before shelling out the cash for EAGLE.

Is that a Linux app? Is there a ready-built version available?

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Melodolic Spielberg

Found it - downloading for a look-see.

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Melodolic Spielberg

I don't know why I bother to put more than 1 link in a post. People never click more than 1

--and sometimes it's not the FIRST one.

The latter links were to show that B2's association with EAGLE is well documented and that it is not freeware. It is NOT the ONLY choice.

You say *it* as if I only pointed to only 1 app. If you go back and click ALL of the links I provided and start reading the thread, you will get more than a tiny fraction of the story.

Here are some more fractions: http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:sOpg7yAt7PMJ:

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:S39kRrWyKsQJ:

When I post links, I usually put a couple of human-friendly words on the line above, to indicate what the link leads to.

Story?

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Melodolic Spielberg

use the keyboard shortcuts.

Bye. Jasen

Still doesn't work unless 'move', 'drag' or 'delete' have been used to select first. Even if I change to a different hotkey, the rotate command remains unavailable.

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Melodolic Spielberg

My take is that most that write software are not practising, professional users of said software.

Like, rotating, mirroring, flipping vertical, delete in SS is like..., hover mouse and press err.."r", "m", "f" "delete":-)

Cant imagine why anyone would not want to just mouse grab the symbol to move it in one go.

Note, there is no self destruct in SS. and.. If you use the hierarchical bit, you can actually place 30*25 components in the demo.

Kevin Aylward B.Sc. snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture, Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

"There are none more ignorant and useless,than they that seek answers on their knees, with their eyes closed"

Or even competent amateur programmers who understand why standard user interface paradigms were established.

I've tried it and, yes, the interface does seem a lot better. Aside from the ability to do noun/verb manipulation, I think the big range of default toolbar buttons help with getting started. Appropos Jakote's comment to Janeway, regarding the use of pictograms, the SS ones seem to represent their functions quite well, and hovering the mouse over the less clear ones to get the tooltips was an easier way to familiarise than, say, trawling through menus in LTSpice.

Can SS do a full-width/full-height cursor rather than a little pencil? (I have a definite preference for that type of cursor in drafting programs.) While the grid helps with placing wires in orthogonal relationships with other objects, the big cross-hair is still the most effective in my experience (the fastest - the eye doesn't have to move from one to the other to know that the cursor is correctly placed - with the grid, you have to look at the target to be aligned against, then follow the dots down/along to check that the cursor is in the right place). I liked LTSpice's use of dashed lines - easier to see what's 'behind the cursor'. Other vitals, in my view, are the ability to zoom using the scroll wheel (and zoom smoothly, at that - some progs are far too granular), and to pan using the centre button.

That's the bit I don't get. It's actually rather frustrating to find that clicking something doesn't select it, that a selection box can't be thrown around it, and that there is simply no response to a right-click.

The limit is number of components, then? What about nodes, or can as many nodes as needed be created to connect a handful of components which each have lots of pins?

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Melodolic Spielberg

Yes.

I'll add it on the to do list....sometime...

For the demo, Its the number of main netlines that is generated. Each component placed generates one netline. There isnt a set node limit. You can have 30 components on the top level. These can be real components or blocks. The blocks can be attached to ".subckt" text models, or they can be attached to a lower level schematic. One descended level of hierarchy is allowed in the demo. The descended level can have 25 components, thus with 30 blocks on the top level, 25*30 net real components. You can also draw a schematic and have a ".subckt" automatically generated. There is a example hierarchy circuit.

Kevin Aylward B.Sc. snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture, Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

"There are none more ignorant and useless,than they that seek answers on their knees, with their eyes closed"

Okay, got the idea - thanks.

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Melodolic Spielberg

You might also find alternatives from my notes and links to some 60 ECAD programs at

Terry Pinnell Hobbyist, West Sussex, UK