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How Interested Are You In Learning More About Circuit Simulation?

rscasny

Over the last two years we have been approached by different vendors who have circuit simulators of introducing the element14 community to them. Another vendor recently approached us, so I thought I would get a conversation going to gauge your interest and discover what you might like to do with circuit simulators.

There are plenty of simulators on the market today. Some are well known, others are not. For those of you who may not be familiar with circuit simulators, they are software that emulates the behavior of a real hardware circuit before it is built. The circuit simulator can be used to verify a hardware design.

I'd prefer not to just say here is the simulator and here's the specs and what it can do. I'd rather have community members get the opportunity to play around with it and report to the community what they discovered. 

I know this is a big area and I expect in the future these simulators will become very sophisticated and part of every electronic engineer's toolbox. For now (and for planning purposes), I'd like some feedback on these polls.

Thank you for taking the time to vote.

Randall

-element14 Team

  • Have wanted to try one of these, but have just never gotten around to it.

  • I’ve used simulation a few times (LTSpice) where I’m not sure of something, but I find the tool difficult to pick up and understand.  I also find it difficult to find models to import, and even how to do it.  I don’t know if his is because LTSpice is so old-Skool or if it’s just the MacOS version of it.  I have found that the results it shows aren’t always accurate - down to the model I presume - and that to recognise that situation requires prior experience and knowledge.  Thus, I’m never quite sure whether to trust what I see or not!  Getting to grips with simulation is something I’d like to do and see more info on.  I’m happy with the workshop approach, but it would be good if that were followed by some form of competition/roadtest/experiment

  • The benefits of Spice simulations!

    The image below(it is from a ppt presentation I created a while back for some radio talk) shows (in this example using Multisim) a simulation of an entire SDR receiver. Going from this to a real prototype was therefore easy. I went directly from this to a perfboard prototype which worked first time, with perhaps a tweak or two, and then to a PCB layout which too worked fine (I think there were 2 bodge wires, but that's my error, not Spice error!). The need for the few tweaks was because Spice isn't intended to be for RF applications, and I didn't have good models for a few of the parts as a result. Anyway, it saved days/weeks of effort to have done the simulation first.

    image

  • in reply to shabaz

    at my institute we are making digital twins of crops, in that sense a digital twin of an electronic circuit should be easy.

    image

  • in reply to shabaz

    You can simulate almost everything using spice, you only have to translate whatever you want to simulate to an electric model. I used to simulate thermal performance of heatsinks, I know someone that used spice to simulate his Invesment and savings.

  • in reply to gpolder
    gpolder said:
    an experimenting challenge is my second choice.

    That's what I voted for.

  • in reply to gpolder

    Hi Gerrit,

    Interesting concept. I had not connected such a thought before, but now that you mention it, I see a netlist is like a digital twin, and since simulation software also can contain the detail on the signals in and out of the circuit as well, it can essentially provide the information on what can be measured and what can be controlled. I wonder what simulation manufacturers will be first to provide digital twin export capability from their software. This could be helpful for troubleshooting problems in the field with complex multi-board/module industrial products for instance.

    My colleague and I briefly discussed digital twins in a podcast incidentally,  "The Industrial Metaverse" - All Things Tech Podcast  but more generally since we had not considered this. Very neat idea.

  • Simulation is useful if you're trying to figure out a filter configuration.  It's been a while since i've played with PSpice

  • I never actually used any circuit simulator, but that's something that I was willing to try.  I do love a hands on approach - if it burns, it burns - but because it is mainly on cheap components.. Slight smile

    I'm going to give it a go

  • I'm definitely interested in this topic, I sometimes used free online tools such as circuitlab. I would rather like to learn about the differences between the online and offline tools.

    Furthermore it would be interesting to put it in a broader scope. We hear a lot about digital twins currently. I think linking circuit simulation, modelling and digital twins will be very beneficial for the electronics community.

    BTW, I voted for a workshop, but an experimenting challenge is my second choice.