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).
The title does seem like a misaimed comparison.
A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003
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Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003
#22The 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).
Yeah on my machine it's a lot slower using Firefox than chrome. We can investigate and see why it's happening. 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)
macOS Safari (2020 Intel MacBook Pro) is unusably slow.
Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003
#23Pretty cool, though I would say that a breadboard is probably a worse UI for capturing circuits than whatever we had in 2003. But it is fair that e.g. LTspice has a terrible GUI. I always thought QUCS had the best UI of all the free options: https://qucs.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html Unfortunately it's not the most popular project.
3d does present some additional challenges, but we decided to go this route to reduce friction for beginners who might not understand how schematics or other abstract representations map to the real world circuits they're playing with
I'm still not sure what the 3D aspect in particular adds, though. Tools which work with physical wiring diagrams, like Fritzing, have been available for ages, and I don't think the 2D nature of those tools has ever been a meaningful obstacle to understanding.
Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003
#24Wow, so awesome!
Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003
#25I want 2003. That's the last time anything worked.
LTspice for example.
Edit: worth nothing there is a native macOS port of LTspice now.
Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
3d does present some additional challenges, but we decided to go this route to reduce friction for beginners who might not understand how schematics or other abstract representations map to the real world circuits they're playing with
I'm still not sure what the 3D aspect in particular adds, though. Tools which work with physical wiring diagrams, like Fritzing, have been available for ages, and I don't think the 2D nature of those tools has ever been a meaningful obstacle to understanding.
In my opinion, 3D is useful if:
a) You want to check that your components won't physically bash into something else you care about
b) You are designing something that operates at RF to mm-wave frequencies and need to worry (a lot) about the spatial location of the high-frequency components and nearby conductors / ground planes
c) You want to get an idea about airflow and heat dissipation on power electronics and/or modules (such as power amplifiers) that come with their own heatsinks (some SIPs do!)
Kicad and other bits of more hobby-orientated software that do a 3D render (such as diptrace) tend to do it for reasons (a) and (c). Software that does (b) properly costs hundreds of thousands of €$£ per year to rent and tends to have a UI that makes you scream with frustration at every possible moment.
Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey! I work on Diode w/ Austin (OP). Yeah we use a wasm-compiled version of ngSpice for the circuit simulation.
Cool! We did something similar when I was on the team that built multisim.com
That's so cool that there's a web version now! I was introduced to multisim back in high-school and enjoyed that unit a lot, will play around with it on the weekend :)
Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003
#28This is great for learning - you should consider a mode that switches to traditional schematic view so people can understand the corresponding circuit.
I believe another web-based tool which can do this already is https://www.flux.ai
I've noodled around with it and I like it, but I actually find working with pencil, paper, and the actual components to be more efficient than panning and zooming around a 3d environment. It's not always an option so these simulators are very useful, but I've come to realize I'm far better off by planning not to use these tools, I guess.
Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003
#29The 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).
Also doesn't seem to work in Chrome: I see a toolbar and the rest of the page is blank.
Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003
#30Schematics are for understanding what a circuit does.
Breadboards are for prototyping small low-speed circuits.
Veroboard is for prototyping larger medium-speed circuits.
Gerbers & a PCB are for production and for prototyping large or high-speed circuits.
If the tool could automatically make a 3D breadboard view from a schematic, it'd be pretty neat for beginners. If the tool warned you when the normal parasitic capacitance between breadboard rows would cause problems with a part you're using, that'd be amazing for teaching.