A method of calculating inductances based on first principles is presented, which has the advantage over the more popular simulators in that fundamental formulas are explicitly used so that a deeper understanding of the inductance calculation is obtained with no need for explicit discretization of the inductor. It also has the advantage over the traditional method of formulas or table lookups in that it can be used for a wider range of configurations. It relies on the use of fast computers with a sophisticated mathematical computing language such as Mathematica to perform the required integration numerically so that the researcher can focus on the physics of the inductance calculation and not on the numerical integration.