Best circuit simulator for beginner experimentation?

[Tac Eht Xilef]

I tried playing with LTspice more and I'm thoroughly unimpressed. It is a usability nightmare on the mac. I still can't get the simulator to run, I tried plugging the error message into google but only like 5 search results are returned and none of them are relevant.

Right-click -> 'Draft' -> 'Spice Directive', right-click in the textarea -> 'Help Me Edit'.

[free_electron]

[Aodhan145]

You have a good point.

[MagicSmoker]

...
You have a good point.

And it is nicely tinned, too. (rimshot!)

Okay, more seriously - I've used both TINA and LTSpice most recently. TINA is a decent enough program for analog and digital circuits and has a good selection of ICs and components built-in whereas LTSpice is a surprisingly capable program for switch-mode converters, but not general purpose simulation nor is it particularly user-friendly (one step up from manually entering a netlist, really). LTSpice is much better at dealing with real world components (ie - parasitics in inductors, capacitors, transformers, IGBTs, MOSFETs, diodes, etc.). You can get real leakage inductance spikes, ringing, etc., with LTSpice, whereas TINA (and many other similar PSpice derivatives) tend to rely on ideal components, sometimes exclusively.

[Rerouter]

falstad circuit simulator without a single doubt in my mind,

http://www.falstad.com/circuit/

Apart from the mosfets, its just forgiving but equally cruel enough that you can work out why something is going wrong in minutes vs hours for proof of concept circuits, see if a values power is suitable, etc, have fun!

[ez24]

falstad circuit simulator without a single doubt in my mind,

http://www.falstad.com/circuit/

Apart from the mosfets, its just forgiving but equally cruel enough that you can work out why something is going wrong in minutes vs hours for proof of concept circuits, see if a values power is suitable, etc, have fun!
[/quote

thanks