Reliability of LTspice IV simulations

[In2Dusk]

I am designing a simple radio transmitter circuit in LTspice...everything seems to be working fine but i am not sure if i can rely on the simulation.
How accurate are theese simulations? Does LTspice have any known bugs concerning simulations? Will the circuit work if i actually build it?

 

[LvW]

Re: Reliability of LTspice IV

I am designing a simple radio transmitter circuit in LTspice...everything seems to be working fine but i am not sure if i can rely on the simulation.
How accurate are theese simulations? Does LTspice have any known bugs concerning simulations? Will the circuit work if i actually build it?

Accuracy is determined primarily by the exactness of the macro models used. If necessary - they can be improved/completed by additional parts (pin and parasitic capacitances, source resistors, ....).
In any case, it is important to have reliable expectations how the result should look like. This is necessary to evaluate the exactness and reliability of the results. Otherwise simple failures cannot be revealed (forgotten supply voltages, false polarity, 1m instead of 1M,....). More than that, for a good circuit design the results don't depend to much on the macro models due to negative feedback with reduced influence of opamp and transistor parameters.

 

[FvM]

Re: Reliability of LTspice IV

A few words in addition to the points LvW said about models and working with simulation in general:

LTSpice shares most of the basic simulator engine code with other SPICE variants. It can use the same vendor models. There are minor differences in the transient analysis solver and different extensions for behavioral modelling. Most problems give identical simulation results with any SPICE simulator.

Will the circuit work if i actually build it?

You have to care that all relevant effects are represented in the simulation. Depending on the kind of application, this can be almost easy or hard to achieve.