[quote author=Alexander link=1322576364/30#33 date=1323086745]
buddypoor wrote on Dec 5th, 2011, 12:17am:I am mentioning the fact that the user of a piece of software cannot (and is not expected) to know all the details of the simulator. It is the task and responsibility of the software engineer to make its use trivial.
Perhaps this discussion is not very fruitful - however, now I strongly disagree.
Do you really think that the use of a high-quality simulation program should and can be "trivial"? Don't you think it is up to the user
only to set a correct and realistic simulation environment?
Think of items like:
Simulation time, max. time step, initial conditions, power switch-on transients, frequency resolution, operational point (offset), stability aspects,.....
Even "modelling" is a task that belongs to the users side (and is not part of the program)
Most important: The user should have in advance an idea how the simulation result should look like. Otherwise, he believes everything - even false results because of errors during schematic entry.
I am working with several different simulators since more than 30 years - and I cannot remember one single case where the simulation program itself was responsible for an unexpected and false result.
(This applies to analog circuits only; I have not much experience with digital circuits).
Please, can you give me such an example?
Regards.