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 KiCAD’s SPICE integration was as natural as LTSpice and I could maintain 1 library of parts.
Breadboards are getting too painful for me to use. Too much time dealing with bad connections or noise from jumper wires being little antennas. It’s more of an issue with audio circuits than digital.
I guess my dream is if you could easily get a symbol, footprint, SPICE model, and 3D model of parts from vendors that all dropped into 1 toolchain.
Maybe a commercial offering is more like that. I’ve never really looked.
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
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 KiCAD’s SPICE integration was as natural as LTSpice and I could maintain 1 library of parts.
Breadboards are getting too painful for me to use. Too much time dealing with bad connections or noise from jumper wires being little antennas. It’s more of an issue with audio circuits than digital.
I guess my dream is if you could easily get a symbol, footprint, SPICE model, and 3D model of parts from vendors that all dropped into 1 toolchain.
Maybe a commercial offering is more like that. I’ve never really looked.