electangles

[tanjent]

So I just had an idea about visualizing circuits that seems straightforward and useful, but I can't find any mention in Google of someone having used it before. Surely this is not a new idea

Comments

[achild]

I tried to visualize this and failed to see how you tell these rectangles apart.

[tanjent]

You'd color-code them or something - resistors are red, diodes are purple, something like that

[mutantgarage]

Seems to be OK for static circuits, but for dynamics it's going to be limited.
The other visualization I've seen is mechanical, resistors are dashpots (washers with grease) or dampers (shocks), caps are springs and inductors are mass. There is a hydraulic analogy also.
http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/echeeve1/Ref/LPSA/Analogs/ElectricalMechanicalAnalogs.html

I had an EE class where we did these sort of things all semester. Never really useful day to day, but perhaps at a subconscious level it's helped.

[tanjent]

Doh, below comment was supposed to go to you

[tanjent]

I are graphics programmer. If I can scrape the output of a realtime spice simulation somehow, I can visualize dynamic circuits.