The competition might look ancient, but IMO, a 2D interface would be much more productive and easier to work with. This site is completely unusable for me in Firefox (it does work in Edge though).
Reddit on the other hand went to being completely unusable. So much so, that I don't understand who and what motivates it to be the way it is. It's having on due to "old.reddit", but that too is a pain to use on mobile.
Of course all of these would be solvable in a "retro" design as well.
Translating non breadboard circuit schematics to a breadboard is definitely something some people struggle with, It would be useful to have a tool that could do that for you.
My workflow is a complicated combination of LTSpice, KiCAD, prototyping from the schematic and then ordering PCBs. It’s a little painful, but the tools are fast to use. I wish KiCAD’s SPICE integration was as natural as LTSpice and I could maintain 1 library of parts.
Breadboards are getting too painful for me to use. Too much time dealing with bad connections or noise from jumper wires being little antennas. It’s more of an issue with audio circuits than digital.
I guess my dream is if you could easily get a symbol, footprint, SPICE model, and 3D model of parts from vendors that all dropped into 1 toolchain.
Maybe a commercial offering is more like that. I’ve never really looked.
1. was OpenSource
2. would *please* switch to modern conventions for Load/Save/Cut/Paste/Undo/Redo/Exit keyboard shortcuts
3. would have a larger, *online*, library of standard parts instead of having to download every missing ones every time from random obscure places on the internet
4. had a setting for switching off showing the names of *all* the new components on the circuit
5. had a vaguely sane way to keep all the .asy and .sym files used by a .asc in the same directory
6. had a central repo of example circuits / standard circuits
7. had an API to its spice engine
But in the meantime, and in spite of its old age, it's still light-years ahead of the web-based thing from 2022
ironically maybe it's also feedback that our share feedback button is too hidden
edit: Also I feel terrible that my negative comment has any weight in this thread. I don't want to be a detractor. It's just that this is not for me.
People work hard to make things and you can't please everybody. You definitely can't please curmudgeons like me sometimes.
One major advantage of web based tools is shareability and we hope to see content creators writing articles with embedded diode projects so that tutorials can include inline interactive examples.
This is already common in the software world with tools like codesandbox and stackblitz, but not so much in the hardware world. Hardware tutorials often include fritzing diagrams, but we think the next step is interactive simulations anywhere and everywhere.
I get what people are saying, but for people trying to dip their toes into electronics (and who maybe can’t afford the equipment just yet), this might be just the thing! I don’t mean to restrict the use cases, I just think a both/and world is just fine. And this is some excellent hacking.
I tip my mouse to you.
It's been challenging to say the least, but that's half the fun.
Here's one of mine.[1] I built that, and it works pretty much the same as the simulation does. Except for the depletion-mode FET current limiter. The resistor that sets the current limit had to be adjusted after building to get the same current limit as the simulation.
LTSpice doesn't help with layout. I had to follow the layout instructions in the switcher control data sheet to get it to work. Some of those paths have to be very short.
[1] https://github.com/John-Nagle/ttyloopdriver/tree/master/circ...
That may well be. IN that case, LTSpice would benefit greatly from being able to import the output of a proper schematic capture tool.
If LTSpice was OpenSource, that could be added in a day of work.
I love LTSpice, but the fact that
1. the software sees very little updates over time
2. it's closed source and all the cool shit that could be added to it by the community won't happen
The important part is the device models that simulate components. Those do get updated as new analog ICs come out. It's finding a good model that's hard. Linear Technology keeps the models updated for their own parts, but you have to look around on the Web for many non-LT parts.
I'd probably pay if it was just simple to import 3rd party models, even if they're encrypted. Every time I have to screw around with some encrypted model I worry about whether it's going to end up accurate.
It was much better than the simulator shown on this thread.
I think a modern 2D UI (i.e. with nice looking fonts, swipe gestures, hamburger icons, generous margins and space) would be nice.
Also I do agree that 2D interface is probably important to add at some point too!
I think right now the skeuomorphism is nice for folks wanting to get their hands dirty with circuit projects but don't have all the materials/supplies available for whatever reason (cost/space/etc)
Just take 20 minutes to customize a settings file and reuse for every new project after, iterating as you go and you'll get yourself pretty realistic outputs long term.