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A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

withdiode.com

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Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#221

Post by Kwpolska »

londons_explore wrote: post #214
pkolaczk wrote: post #189

This illustrates a problem with many "modern" applications. My first impression: "Oh, that looks nice. Looks like in real life". Then I tried using it and found that it is clunky and slow to the point it is barely usable and I would much faster build the real circuit on a real breadboard instead.

I'd like to see a study done of this kind of application, but removing all slowness. Perhaps you could run it on a $10k gaming rig, or pre-render all interactions or something to make all reactions instant. That should inform us of the real value of a lifelike 3D UI, separately from the effects of the jankiness that normally accompany them.

This specific circuit simulator does have some performance-related jank, but even if you ignore it, you can easily see where it breaks down, for example:

* If you look at the black/red wires going to the Arduino, they kind of overlap

* If you swap the black/red wires (so that one of them has a shorter distance to cover), you get visual artifacts

* It is trivial to make a wire unconnected while moving it to another hole (and instead just touching the plastic parts of the breadboard)

* Making even the most trivial modifications (eg. putting 5V directly through the diode) requires a lot of dragging, rotating, panning, and zooming to get it done (but hey, at least there’s smoke if you actually do that)

* There are many things that can go wrong, because the developers didn’t think about it; for example, the bottom power rails of the breadboard don’t actually work

* Making a modification to a running circuit is impossible, and switching between design and simulation modes takes time and does not always remember the camera position

All of those aren’t a problem in a 2D simulator. Some of them because the 2D simulator abstracts some things away better (eg. power sources or wires), some of them because the developers could invest more effort in the simulation logic, and some of them because the 3D simulator does a bad job at the real-life parts of it (eg. overlapping wires or putting the connector inside the hole).

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#222

Post by mananaysiempre »

okamiueru wrote: post #220
danuker wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add Hacker News itself as a great example.

Indeed. Hacker news is about as responsive as the native site. 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.

There’s also i.reddit.com with its early-iPhone-era mobile interface.

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#223

Post by classified »

kragen wrote: post #112
musicale wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still trying to solve that Y10K problem I see.

it's slow going, but fortunately we still have a significant amount of time left

But it's invalid. Octal doesn't allow digits above 7.

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#224

Post by rsav »

synack wrote: post #144
repiret wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently came across a reference manual for an SoC that came in at over 24,000 pages - a new personal record. The tools for working with such large PDFs generally suck.

Evince on Linux is by far the best program I've found for reading large PDFs. It's worth the trouble to setup a VM or WSL just to run Evince if you're not natively on Linux.

I've actually been using an (ancient) build of Evince for Windows [0] for quite some time now.

[0] https://www.fosshub.com/Evince.html

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#226

Post by yreg »

danuker wrote: post #216
ryandrake wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, the whole "looks old = bad" meme rears its head again. Some of the most usable web sites in existence like Craigslist and McMaster-Carr look "old" but they do what you need them to do and do it cross-platform/cross-browser.

I would add Hacker News itself as a great example.

Hacker news has horrible accessibility though. Voting on touch devices, readability of downvoted comments, screen reader behaviour, …

Of course all of these would be solvable in a "retro" design as well.

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#227

Post by ur-whale »

Not sure how this is better than a simulator from 2003.

Or even earlier for that matter.

When this can do what LTSpice can do and show a nice 3D simulation with all the voltages in realtime at each node if one wants to see said simulation instead of traces, then yeah it'll be an improvement.

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#228

Post by ur-whale »

salmo wrote: post #65
Kwpolska wrote: post #8

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 tools with origins >2003 are pretty useless beyond making things out of prefab parts. That’s cool for beginner stuff, but I feel like we’re dropping people off a cliff from there. Most are really just sales platforms for parts or PCBs. 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 KiCA…

If LTSpice :

   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
It'd be the perfect tool.

But in the meantime, and in spite of its old age, it's still light-years ahead of the web-based thing from 2022

Re: A circuit simulator that doesn't look like it was made in 2003

#229

Post by ur-whale »

Animats wrote: post #143
chongli wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.
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