I have tried other SPICE programs, and decided to give PSPICE for TI a try.
So far, my experience has been very frustrating and disappointing. I would like to be able to chalk that up to my inexperience but....here are some observations from 12 hours of frustration:
- The so-called Users-Guide ("UG") is 2 years out of date (2019) and apparently doesn't reflect many changes obviously made to the current Version. For example: with regards to the section on "importing models" which are in the form of text files, the UG (2019; ~page 855) says to rename the file with the *.MOD file-extension. But, in the more-recent tutorial video and in the internal "HELP" file, it says that this file should have the *.LIB extension. Now....
- Using either the *.LIB or the *.MOD extension, I seem to get similar results and NEITHER of those results are useful. I can see the created *.OLB in the "Library" file structure displayed in the panel on the LHS of the GUI for the schematic I am working on, but I have no idea of how I can pull that *.OLB into my schematic. Drag-and-drop doesn't work, and a Search for "Parts" or "PSPICE COMPONENT" doesn't locate the item----even though it is clearly in the "library" associated with the schematic I am working on !
- My observation so far is that the System Variables / Paths (etc etc) is hopelessly convoluted. This is only made much worse by the fact that the UM and the pop-up HELP files don't agree. It is, to my mind, entirely unclear how the Library structure works. For the content experts who wrote the UG and the HELP files ---- that is to say, those who work on schematics and code professionally ---- you would think that a flow chart of some other sort of DIAGRAM would be their first choice for conveying the overall 'shape' of that Library. But, such a thing is no where to be found.
- It is not intuitively sensible that all of the "parts" seem to be primarily in a cache associated with the schematic. I can understand having a 'cache' of those "parts" as a fall-back (so that in the future, the schematic can be exported, stored and used in the future even if the foundational library has changed), but if I create a part / model / Pspice component, I want that creation to be available for ALL of my schematic modelling, NOT just for the one I am working on presently ! So, I should be able to designate a default User Library where a copy of all these new models get stored automatically (as well as going into the current Project folder).
- What really doesn't make sense is that there is this plethora of "parts" in what is ostensibly a SPICE-centric program, but it seems to me that very few of them actually have SPICE numerical models associated with them ! ! ! Those PSPICE-simulation-compatible devices are not Parts, they are "PSPICE Components". This is hopelessly arcane terminology. It is like the secret handshakes of a fraternity. Dividing devices into "Parts" and "Pspice Components" doesn't seem to have any parallel elsewhere in the electronics engineering / technology world. I am not relying on PSPICE to draw schematics! I don't NEED "parts" which are nothing more than schematic symbols with functionally meaningless, device-specific names attached to them ! For example: I found a MOSFET in the official library that is named IFR9520, and I put that device into the schematic I was drawing. I then found that PSPICE would not perform a simulation because it had NO numerical model associated with it! What is the sense of having such a "part" in a SPICE library !?? It is nothing more than a schematic symbol!
