Chuck Harris said:
Ok, I'll bite, why would anyone want a clipped down student version when
a complete professional spice that is compatible with PSPICE is available
from Linear Technology for free?
The usual reasons are because (1) your educational institute has been using
PSpice (it's been around a lot longer than LTSpice has) and most people would
rather bug their classmates/professor if something doesn't work than take
their chances in the Internet (and most professors take a very hands-off
approach on actively changing software they've been using for a decade) or (2)
it has some feature you need (again because your school is using them), such
as support for specific transistor level models that LTSpice doesn't.
For a home hobbyist, I can't imagine when you'd head the PSpice route.
Oh yeah, one final reason... when I was in graduate school, it was required
that you use *HSpice* (which, although quite powerful in absolute terms, is
crap on a power per dollar scale) for your designs so that all the results
could be compared "fairly" (the assignments were to design, e.g., an op-amp or
something with whatever specs, and in general the specs were somewhat
difficult to meet at *all* -- many people didn't, but still get plenty of
partial credit and did fine in the class -- and they didn't want the choice to
simulator to place into how well you did).
