Drudge Work: Path to Engineering Creativity?

One of the best skills I picked up in school was the ability to troubleshoot REAL circuits. We were required to build complex designs on breadboards after we designed and tested them on PSpice. The outcome was generally not what was expected from the computer model. Most of the time it was a faulty component or wire that had snapped inside it's sleeve. Still the ability to look at a real world output and think through what would fail and give an output life that was invaluable.

Hi I'm a recent Olin graduate (from the first class!) in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

I got a ton of experience troubleshooting real circuits. I've "let the magic smoke" out of many chips and watched in horror as I put in the wrong resistor or forgot a diode. Thus, I have to agree that matching real results to expected models has worked well for me.

-- Grant Hutchins, Olin '06

There's nothing like the smell of bursted capacitors in the morning....
I went to Wentworth Inst. of Tech. in Boston myself.

While all initial knowledge comes from touch method, new ways to use same knowledge under simulation can helps a lot when you have little time and zero at financial resources to try in real.

Experts often make good thing at their first trial and can refine to a better level later on. This all calls for crapping of material.

Once core knowledge is developed, we can code it in simple form to have reasonable results. You may still be at approximation so a bit away from real world.

Most of the ASIC chips are simulated designs, while those with large active passive parts can be tabletop design.

I do all Tabletop, but will give extra points to those use software tools. PSPICE is a great work of more than 25 years. I have 30 years experience so was ahead of them and they have over take the world and me. They used to print and send a printed copy of their each work. Finally it is a product now.

Try PSPICE and you will get used to it. That does not mean, never try by hands. Always verify the actual is the real key.

Shyam