[time-nuts] Schematic capture, anyone?

[Rick Karlquist]

Charles P. Steinmetz wrote:
> I've been using LTspice for schematic capture and simulation at
> home.  Will the PCB CAD tools being discussed (Eagle, DesignSpark,
> FreePCB, etc.) import netlists from LTspice?  Or do folks prefer to
> do the schematic capture in a CAD tool and export that netlist to
> LTspice for simulation?
>
> Best regards,
>
> Charles

"Beige Bag" Spice is designed to interchange schematics with Eagle.
I recently evaluated it against LTspice and decided to use LTspice
on the basis that it is more important to get the right Spice tool
than have schematic exchange capability.  Whatever I am going to
simulate, I can usually draw the schematic in 5 minutes anyway.
LTspice is very retro, being just an engine with very little GUI.
Anything beyond the simplest stuff is done by "playing SPICE cards",
which I used to do years ago, so I was already familiar with that
paradigm.  It was actually very refreshing, because I again felt
like I was in control, not trying to figure out what the program
was going to do.  It's kind of like driving a car with a stick shift
vs automatic.

Rick N6RK