I think this is a lot like going to school. Authors can write textbooks and teachers can present lesson material, but it is up to the student to learn. No one ever gets proficient at anything without putting in the work.
I don't believe that any of us who use LTspice on a regular basis think that it is a perfect tool that behaves just the way we think it should. But Analog Devices has generously made it available to the hobbyist for free, so we should be grateful for that. If you take the time to learn both its capabilities and its shortcomings, you will find LTspice to be very useful in spite of some of its quirks. There is a lot of good information in this forum and on the LTspice User Group at Yahoo which should help get you started.
Good luck.
I don't believe that any of us who use LTspice on a regular basis think that it is a perfect tool that behaves just the way we think it should. But Analog Devices has generously made it available to the hobbyist for free, so we should be grateful for that. If you take the time to learn both its capabilities and its shortcomings, you will find LTspice to be very useful in spite of some of its quirks. There is a lot of good information in this forum and on the LTspice User Group at Yahoo which should help get you started.
Good luck.
Things that you don’t have to fight for aren’t worth having them.
Show your fighting spirit and conquer the mountain.
Hans
Professor, you cannot meaningful draw conclusions from measurements - or simulations - if you don't have some detailed knowledge of how the test equipment or simulation works.
If you buy a scope, you can't refuse to think about how it works, and ask a friend to set it up for you and expect to learn anything from the result.
Your attitude is clear: you use a fantastic, powerful simulator that you got for free and call it 'a shame' that it has no convenient (for you) GUI.
Now you refuse to learn the insides of simulation and you want someone else to set it up for you.
You could start by a nice user guide written by a countryman of yours: Linear Audio | your tech audio resource
And no, I don't have it in stock, otherwise I would send you one for free.
Jan
If you buy a scope, you can't refuse to think about how it works, and ask a friend to set it up for you and expect to learn anything from the result.
Your attitude is clear: you use a fantastic, powerful simulator that you got for free and call it 'a shame' that it has no convenient (for you) GUI.
Now you refuse to learn the insides of simulation and you want someone else to set it up for you.
You could start by a nice user guide written by a countryman of yours: Linear Audio | your tech audio resource
And no, I don't have it in stock, otherwise I would send you one for free.
Jan
I use this program since some years. I'm not totally a newbie.
I just wanted to simplify the work for others "for free" (as well as for me, I'm sure that have a lot of things to improve on my side).
I had a friend which used to say: "The word is divided in two categories of people. The savages and the others. The savages catch things that are within their reach for their own profit, the others try to transform the world in their image."
BTW: I had spend, may-be, two hours, long long time ago, to learn how to work with a oscilloscope. Never even read any user manual since this time.
I had spend thousand of hours trying to learn how to work with LTspice. A tool to help you to design something, or a goal in itself ?
If you are involved in photography, this is the difference between Lightroom and Photoshop (that I call "a shame" ;-)
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That’s a whole different topic where our opinions may differ quit a bit. Climate and sea levels are changing as long as planet earth exist. Roughly every 100k years there is an Ice age, see Milankovitch cycle. But all at a sudden man made CO2 production is 100% blamed for being the cause and the natural climat change and sea level rise is completely left aside.
It has turned into a belief, where like in many other beliefs dicussion is impossible because things cannot be proven. But I agree that we should care for our planet and don’t use it as a big waste bin and stop exhausting as much as possible our natural resources. Our biggest threat is not Climate but population explosion of ca 1mio/week.
Hans
Carefully, I did not talk about causes or responsibilities. Global warming is an indisputable fact. But, as you say, that's another topic.
LT Spice?
LTSpice (in fact all the spice simulators) was built on Berkeley Spice originally, an all text interface solver. The GUI is a great help for creating a complex netlist and getting it right but its an addition, just like all the others, pasted on top of the netlist and solver.
Early on you had to work with the native netlist after it was generated to make some of the detailed changes etc. Doing that really helps understand what is and is not going on under the hood.
The lack of "props" to optimize the mysterious spice settings etc. is partly so the program doesn't lie to you. If it doesn't converge you need to figure out whether its a model, an impossible circuit etc. and in the process are much more likely to make a circuit that works when assembled.
Watching folks here chase ultra low distortion in spice sims is entertaining but really unrealistic. The models (even resistors) are not accurate to that level.
I also think the latest LTSpice interface is retrograde but I'll get past it. There are many others to explore. TI Tina is pretty good but completely different. It may better suit some. I suspect importing part models would be even more difficult.
I would love a tool to make importing models easier with error checking to validate the imports and put the pieces in the right places. It's too easy to get pins swapped or find a model with some components that don't work well in LTspice (but work fine in something else).
Early on you had to work with the native netlist after it was generated to make some of the detailed changes etc. Doing that really helps understand what is and is not going on under the hood.
The lack of "props" to optimize the mysterious spice settings etc. is partly so the program doesn't lie to you. If it doesn't converge you need to figure out whether its a model, an impossible circuit etc. and in the process are much more likely to make a circuit that works when assembled.
Watching folks here chase ultra low distortion in spice sims is entertaining but really unrealistic. The models (even resistors) are not accurate to that level.
I also think the latest LTSpice interface is retrograde but I'll get past it. There are many others to explore. TI Tina is pretty good but completely different. It may better suit some. I suspect importing part models would be even more difficult.
I would love a tool to make importing models easier with error checking to validate the imports and put the pieces in the right places. It's too easy to get pins swapped or find a model with some components that don't work well in LTspice (but work fine in something else).
Wow. Really? Thousands? In that case, you should be expert enough to have some search words and do a specific search. I needed 2 minutes, the first result ist a very short and informative thread: LMGTFY
Or even better, in all these hours, you would have built those circuits for real and measured for real. Always better than a simulation. And sure more fun.
You haven't understood my attempt. My desire was to simplify and fasten the daily use of ltspice for others and make-it intuitive and working good enough for beginners.Having only to enter the frequency and level of the source in order to get the correct "Spice errors" (What a name for distortion ;-) and FFT, as an example. The multi signal generator of Keantoken is a good example of what could be done to simplify our work.
As far I was in concern, i had to learn how to find the good models, the good links to learn how tomanage this "max-step" problem etc.
But, indeed, I was able to make, some years ago, my first simulation of one of my circuits in one hour... results: totally inaccurate.
You have all my admiration to be able to enter the schematic of an amplifier and simulate-it 2 mn after you downloaded LTSpice for the first time.
Really ? My first job (1969) was as an engineer in the R&D department of an Hifi manufacturer. We were 2 guys on the electronic design, got several patents at this time and had several successful Hifi gears on the market: Amplifiers, turntables, integrated hifi systems, tuners etc. Go figure.
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You know exactly what I meant with two minutes, do you? No need to be sarcastic.
A pretty useful thread about fft / time step / frequency, if you cared to look it up at all. Was just a service because you complained that it costs too much time to read this lengthy thread here. But anyway, do it how you prefer it to do. Spoon feeding is not my hobby.
The multi signal generator of Keantoken that I immediately adopted ;-)
I was because your words were pretty patronizing.
As handy as that may be, the high dv/dt generators may/will influence (depending on overall resolution [and other factors]) your results even if that generator is not in use. Also, running multiple generators when only one may be in use will slow down the simulation.
Where did you publish the intermediate results?
How much ? I didn't noticed any slow down, on my side. Have you at least tried it? If you are right, it seems not complicated to spare-it into 4 generators, commenting the ones that are not in use. I leave you to debate this with its author. It is this kind of remark that could have been constructive if this utopian community project had come into being. This said, I don't see any difference, while I put always in my schematics 3 voltage generators, 1 for sinus, two for this annoying square wave. A question, in the style of yours, what do you propose instead ?
..."if this community project had come into being." there is no intermediate result in something that is not born. It seems that some come to answer only to show their spirit of contradiction and to satisfy their aggressiveness.
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There is a problem riight there.
There is this sort mentality ( or is it a mental condition) that "everyone should be able to do everything with little to no effort. without knowing too much"
"The only thing lower than low standards, is the results they produce. - "
"Why make-it simple when we can make-it complicated ?" ©Shadocks
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