How Interested Are You In Learning More About Circuit Simulation?

My post is the start of the Rarely response.

The closet I have come to circuit simulation is a pad and paper drawing a circuit and doing the "goes-into's" calculations. I have dabbled in GNURadio to develop SDR radio configurations maybe that counts?

I would like to see a design challenge, to simulate an idea and then build it as a real circuit to prove that the difference between simulation and reality is just the same in simulation and reality.

I'm old school as well - I usually calculate what I need to know. I have used simulation software (usually specialized simulators), especially for complex switching power supplies. But for something like a power supply, I'm usually not trying to invent a novel circuit, and in fact will most often use an off-the-shelf or known-good solution.

I dont use a circuit simulator because I grew up without one, but do see the usefulness & advantages. Reliable, easy to use sim tools are not in my hobby budget.

A circuit simulator that also provides a good schematic would be awesome, and a tool that included Arduinos, Raspberry Pi, RPi Pico and variants, Adafruit sensors, etc.. for schematics would be awesome.  

I voted for Road Test since that would document a real user experience. A workshop is great too, but usually those are demonstrated by experts, makes the difficult look easy.

 Just for fun, I'm going to give MultiSim a shot since it is the tool used by my local community college. 

I use a pretty old version of Multisim to validate designs before prototyping them.  Something with more current devices would be most welcome!

"Simulators" covers a very wide range of tools from various vendors. Most engineers probably think of circuit-level tools when you use the word "simulation." For example, a SPICE-based tool. These are useful for evaluating the performance of multiple connected components, across various conditions. (Provided appropriate models are available for all the components!)

However, I think many component vendors offer simulators which are, essentially, single-component simulation tools. These muddy the water a little bit because they get lumped in with SPICE-based simulators, even though they are not! These allow you to build characterization graphs (or models) for a single specific component. For example, KEMET has K-SIM (for capacitors), Diodes, Inc has one for their components, and many (or all?) FET/IGBT/SIC/GAN vendors also offer tools for their semiconductors. These are far less generic tools and are, essentially, digital datasheets. e.g., you aren't simulating a SiC transistor with some capacitors and the effects of the PCB traces...

So, tldr, I'd be careful to lump all simulators together.

Multisim is very good. Very low learning curve, because it tries to give measurements to a "running circuit" whereas most other simulators only provide results after a simulation has executed. 

However Multisim is still doing the same thing underneath that other circuit simulators are doing, but with the difference that it is kind of faking it by running the simulation repeatedly with small time increments, so it looks as if it is a live running circuit. It's very neat though.

It is a bit expensive but I once found an online store with an offer for families with kids in school (you had to submit proof of that), and then it was reduced to about $100 so I purchased it. The version I purchased has a circuit size limit, but I rarely hit the limit, since often just a subset of a larger circuit might need to be simulated.

If you get stuck let me know, I'm fairly familiar with it!

I  would love to learn a simulator but it's not my background. I'm sure I could get a lot of good understanding from the clever e14 people who do test this simulator. 

I voted "other" because for some simulators the learning might need to be (say) "online training" or "webinar" because some are hard to use without that (and some specific types of simulators are near-impossible with no training).

If it's a "general-purpose" type of circuit simulation (e.g. not RF or math or electromagnetic or component-specific etc), then the underlying system uses software called "SPICE", and probably the easiest one to use for beginners might be Multisim, but it's a shame it is so expensive usually, way more than it should be. If that product ever comes up for a RoadTest and you (or anyone) wishes to apply, then I'd be happy to do a 20-min training session or video recording, since it is easily possible to teach it that quickly.

Definitely worth trying a SPICE simulator, but as mentioned some of them have more of a learning overhead. Lots of people use LTSpice, and while it is not as quick to pick up as Multisim, there should be lots of videos of that, but I've not watched any and don't know which ones to recommend : ( 

I used to use PSpice all the time in teaching power and electronics.  It was fantastic.  Do the simulation.  Build the circuit.  Measure.  Explain the difference.  I also used it to build series of graphics to demonstrate concepts.  I do miss it.  Of course, I don't remember paying for PSpice in those days either.