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Comment by ilyt | Hacker News Reader

If you have ever used LTSpice you'd know, the "old" looking layout is not really a problem but the arcane way anything is done, different from every app I ever used.

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I jump from altium to kicad to solidworks multiple times a day but the most annoying jump is when I go to ltspice and go, why is move bound to F7. I stopped even bothering to try to use hotkeys on LTspice.

The key shortcuts in ltspice are hilarious, it took a decade before I found another program that used R and E for rotate and mirror instead of right clicking in some way. I still haven't decided whether I prefer the horror of embedding models, creating single-system-only library files that I can't give to anyone, or ... it's amazing.

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.

LTSpice is pretty great. I used it in undergrad to design and simulate a single block of CMOS memory. It was a little tough getting going, but once I figured things out it was a great experience.

I just started using LTSpice a few days ago. It's pretty arcane for sure but at least it's consistent. The tool is really not that complicated at all. Its value seems to be in its simulation capabilities as well as its selection of standard components. It does crash here and there, though, but I haven't lost any work yet.

Well, yes. LTSpice is not for schematic capture. It's for simulation. If you have to do power supply design, LTSpice lets you almost get it right before you order parts.

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...

> LTSpice is not for schematic capture. It's for simulation.

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

is really a huge downer.

You usually use LTSpice only to simulate difficult analog parts of a circuit. Not the whole thing.

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.

To show my age, during digital circuit design classes I used something similar but targeted to Windows 3.x.

It was much better than the simulator shown on this thread.

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