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Spice Essentials

21 Apr 2015

Did you ever get stuck figuring out how to run spice? These essential spice tips will get you on your way.

Recently I have been searching for good linux tools to simulate circuits. Spice is widely known in circuit simulation. This short guide should help you get started; including how to perform graphical plotting with nutmeg. All the below demos are using ngspice and ngnutmeg. In this post I assume you know the basics of writing or generating spice netlists.

We will cover the basics of:

Analysis

When analyzing a circuit we need to use spice analysis commands. These are usually placed at the end of your netlist.

Using OP

The first and most simple analysis command you should know is the OP command. It provides the dc operating point voltage dump of all nodes with capacitors fully charged (no current) and inductors fully inducting (shorted).

Usage

.op

Example

Download op.cir

* OP analysis of Voltage divider 
V1 2 0 DC 10V
R1  2 1 50K             
R2  1 0 20K             
.op
.end

When running we can see that the voltage and current of each node is displayed.

$ ngspice -b op.cir

No. of Data Rows : 1
        Node                                  Voltage
        ----                                  -------
        ----    -------
        V(1)                             2.857143e+00
        V(2)                             1.000000e+01

        Source  Current
        ------  -------

        v1#branch                        -1.42857e-04

Using TRAN

The next analysis command to know is the TRAN command.

TRAN will run the circuit for a fixed time and take interval measurements. The below .tran 0.1m 5m will measure for 5 milliseconds and output every 0.1 milliseconds. It should print 50 readings. You should choose your measurements based on the frequency of the input source to allow you to see the full wave,

Usage

.tran STEP END <START> <MAX>

Note: spice manuals mention the step time of TRAN is not always used by spice. If END-START/50 is less than STEP spice will set step to the smaller value. I haven’t seen this affect my simulations yet.

Example

Download tran.cir

* TRAN analysis of RC circuit
Vin  2 0 AC SIN(0 0.02 440)
R5  2 1 1K
C1  1 0 4.7uF
.tran 0.1m 3m
.plot tran v(2), v(1)
.end

When running we can see a plot printed of our analysis.

$ ngspice -b tran.cir

No. of Data Rows : 63
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
                       * ac analysis of rc circuit
               Transient Analysis Tue Apr 21 22:55:08  2015

Legend:  + = v(2)             * = v(1)             
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
 time       v(2)    -2.00e-02   -1.00e-02    0.00e+00    1.00e-02    2.00e-02   
----------------------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|
 0.000e+00  0.000e+00 .           .           X           .           .   
 1.000e-04  5.456e-03 .           .           *     +     .           .   
 2.000e-04  1.047e-02 .           .           *           +           .   
 3.000e-04  1.471e-02 .           .           *           .    +      .   
 4.000e-04  1.786e-02 .           .           *           .        +  .   
 5.000e-04  1.958e-02 .           .           .*          .          +.   
 6.000e-04  1.987e-02 .           .           .*          .          +.   
 7.000e-04  1.867e-02 .           .           . *         .         + .   
 8.000e-04  1.598e-02 .           .           . *         .      +    .   
 9.000e-04  1.213e-02 .           .           .  *        . +         .   
 1.000e-03  7.356e-03 .           .           .  *    +   .           .   
 1.100e-03  2.000e-03 .           .           . +*        .           .   
 1.200e-03 -3.490e-03 .           .      +    .  *        .           .   
 1.300e-03 -8.736e-03 .           .+          . *         .           .   
 1.400e-03 -1.328e-02 .       +   .           . *         .           .   
 1.500e-03 -1.684e-02 .  +        .           . *         .           .   
 1.600e-03 -1.916e-02 .+          .           .*          .           .   
 1.700e-03 -1.993e-02 +           .           .*          .           .   
 1.800e-03 -1.926e-02 +           .           *           .           .   
 1.900e-03 -1.714e-02 .  +        .           *           .           .   
 2.000e-03 -1.365e-02 .      +    .          *.           .           .   
 2.100e-03 -9.168e-03 .           +          *.           .           .   
 2.200e-03 -3.990e-03 .           .      +   *.           .           .   
 2.300e-03  1.502e-03 .           .          *.+          .           .   
 2.400e-03  6.873e-03 .           .          *.       +   .           .   
 2.500e-03  1.175e-02 .           .          *.           . +         .   
 2.600e-03  1.567e-02 .           .           *           .     +     .   
 2.700e-03  1.845e-02 .           .           *           .         + .   
 2.800e-03  1.986e-02 .           .           *           .          +.   
 2.900e-03  1.967e-02 .           .           .*          .          +.   
 3.000e-03  1.810e-02 .           .           .*          .        +  .   
----------------------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|
 time       v(2)    -2.00e-02   -1.00e-02    0.00e+00    1.00e-02    2.00e-02   

elapsed time since last call: 0.018 seconds.

Controlling Output

To output data during simulation we use the PLOT and PRINT commands. These commands work together with dynamic analysis commands like TRAN to output analysis data points.

The plot command will plot a ascii chart of analysis.

.plot tran v(1), v(8)

The print command will print the value of the analysis.

.print tran v(1), v(8)

Running Spice

When simulating a circuit we have a few options.

# Running in batch mode
$ ngspice -b op.cir
# Running in interactive move
$ ngspice
> source op.cir
> run
# will display output as above
> edit
# Will allow editing of your circuit

Another option is to output the analysis data in raw format. This data can then be loaded up in ngnutmeg for further analysis.

# This commands runs the analysis in preamp.cir and outputs raw data to
# tran.raw
ngspice -b tran.cir -r tran.raw
# The below command loads the raw file into ngnutmeg and then displays the
# ngnutmeg prompt. The `plot v(1)` command will bring up a view of the wave form
ngnutmeg tran.raw
> plot v(2) v(1)

NGNutmeg Analysis

Further Reading

Keep an eye on this stack exchange discussion which mentions other tools for simulating circuits in linux.

These guides have been very help: