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I just wanted to say thanks to the developers and programmers who made this website. My school has been working with an antiquated version of PSpice for years. Now that our students know about this website, everyone is using it. This website has really taken circuit-sims into the 21st century, with all the user-friendly features one has come to expect from modern cloud-based content. On behalf of the EE students of the University of Southern Maine, thank you!

I've been in the business for a while ...

CL is a great idea and up to a point is a fantastic resource. The ease of schematic drawing and sharing is great for newcomers. However, it has some serious limitations and a few equally serious flaws.

Compared to most simulation tools:

i) the solvers are still very primitive and have far too many convergence problems;

ii) the plotting options are very limited.

a) You cannot start a plot from any time other than T=0 so if you need to see the fine detail at the end of a long settling time you have to wait for the whole plot to end then very crudely manually zoom in to just maybe last 5% of the plot. A load step in an SMPS output operating in the steady state is a classic example where you need to do this.

b) you cannot edit a plot expression and replot the new results without re-running the whole sim

iii) there is no way to parameterise expressions. It can only be done indirectly by setting voltages or currrents to represent the parameters and then there's no way to parameterise thos indirect values ...

iv) there is no support for subcircuits. All circuits are explicit.

v) there is no support for hierarchy. All circuits are flat.

vi) library support is non-existant.

vii) whilst the forums and the pubilcised circuits are quite lively and active, it is increasingly difficult to search for and actually find a particular posting or circuit.

:(

Personally, I care much less about look and feel and much, much more about function. If it doesn't do the job I need it to then it's a waste of code.

And if it's FOSS then that's about as good as it can get. I hate renting software from companies that can jerk me around on the end of their EULA. With a few exceptions (of which CL is sort of an example) my machines and the s/w I run on them are mine. To do with and to share with anyone, anywhere, as I want.

:)

All too true! Still, I hope circuit lab gets there someday. The theme these days has been moving software toward a superior user experience, so it's nice to see this injection of new ideas even if it isn't quite at a professional level yet.