Re: gEDA-user: geda cygwin package

[Joerg <joergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

al davis wrote:
> On Thursday 14 May 2009, Joerg wrote:
>> AFAIK Gnucap is not quite SPICE-compatible, but that's what
>> your students will be facing when they head out into
>> industry. LTSpice might be an alternative. Very short
>> learning curve, free of cost, nice graphics output and by now
>> very widespread in industry.
> 
> It depends which spice.  Strictly, SPICE is not SPICE 
> compatible, because if you move to a different one something 
> will be different.
> 
> I get  the impression that what you want is bug-for-bug 
> compatibility.  From a beginners perspective, the important 
> differences between Gnucap and any particular Spice are usually 
> that Gnucap has extra capability that the Spice doesn't have, 
> and this extra capability is useful to a beginner.
> 

Not bug-for-bug, but as close to the industry standard as practical. If 
you let them use something that has nice features they get used to 
those, and then in industry where they don't have those it becomes a 
problem. You can do just about anything with SPICE, even simulate 
mechanical devices. But one has to learn who to "kludge and cajole" 
SPICE to do that.


> From the viewpoint of undergraduate education, it is as close as 
> any, and provides an experience closer to the high-end 
> simulators than the PC spice's do.  It has a shorter learning 
> curve that the real Spice from Berkeley, and a smoother learning 
> curve than the graphic commercial and cover-crop spice's.  The 
> popular graphic PC spice's carry you part way in luxury, then 
> dump you when you really need it.
> 
> The PC graphic spice's only provide a short learning curve if 
> you already are comfortable with the typical project baggage.  
> Then if you want to play, to do more than what you can do with a 
> few kick buttons, you need to start over.
> 

That's where Usenet comes in :-)

Even a (very) seasoned engineer had to ask about that three days ago, 
how to set abstol and stuff and make it travel with the file. Nothing 
wrong with asking.


> Educators typically use simulators very poorly, as if they 
> themselves don't understand.  In most cases, the total use is a 
> few specified runs with a couple of graphs, that you do after 
> everything else is done.  A more appropriate use of simulators 
> is to explore things that you can't see with real measurements.  
> There is a lot that you can find out about a circuit that you 
> can't measure in a practical way.
> 

Absolutely. That's how I found what degraded and eventually killed RF 
switching diodes in a client's board. With PSPICE. Impossible to see 
even with sampling scopes. Educators should give students stuff to grind 
their teeth on like "Hey, this thing doesn't work right, find out why 
and how to improve it".


> Students need to learn to be flexible, and they need to learn to 
> use computers effectively, not just by kicking the GUI a few 
> times.  EE's, even analog designers, need to learn some serious 
> programming.
> 

They need to and they do, to some extent. They do not have to become 
programming experts, else I might as well demand that all CS guys fully 
understand Maxwell's equations because we have to ;-)


> Too many schools don't do this.  In the extreme case, EE could 
> become a dumping ground for students who can't make it in CS.
> Is that what you want?
> 

That has IME never been the case, and won't be. None of the EEs I know 
started out CS. And don't believe EE is easy, our university had an EE 
flunk-out rate of around 75% plus. ME and EE were the toughest paths 
there, some of the grueling 4h written exams could make grown men shake 
in their boots.

-- 
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.



_______________________________________________
geda-user mailing list
geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user