Tuesday, March 23, 2010

NL5 - "Concept Proving" Tool

The main idea of NL and any other tool used for what I call "concept proving" is ability to

1) simulate schematic with true ideal components;
2) simulate schematic with arbitrary, even non-realistic, topology and component values;
3) have a minimal number (if any) of simulation parameters.

For instance, LTSpice gave a wrong solution for simple switching capacitors circuit, where I just tried to understand the principle, so I used ideal switches, floating capacitors with C=1F, and switching interval 1s. When I asked for explanation on one of LTSpice forums, I was literally accused of simulating "silly" circuits, "intentionally selecting difficult component values", and suggested to use "more reasonable" component values and parameters (TrTol, RelTol, etc.)

I don't think simulating silly circuits with unreasonable component values is a bad thing to do: this must be the only way to invent something really new or at least understand how things work. Of course it would be advantageous to have an easy to use and fast simulation tool as well, but this is another story...

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