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Introduction

SPICECAD is a program for the interactive graphical input and simulation of electronic circuits. Is is getting better day by day, by continuous improvements driven by customer needs. SPICECAD contains an interface to the simulators SPICE3 and HSPICE, which means, that running simulations using a vi-like editor to edit netlists and a waveform tool to display simulation waveforms is a thing of the past. With a simple mouse click, you can change between SPICE3 and HSPICE. All devices and all important types of analyses are supported. (.FOUR, .SENS, .TF , .PZ are not supported yet) SPICE3 is linked to SPICECAD (it is not running in background or as a daemon), which means that the interface is very, very fast. SPICECAD allows hierarchical design techniques with an arbitrary number of hierarchy levels. Netlists which were created by other tools ( for example, macromodels for operational amplifiers supplied by silicon manufacturers) can be incorported , too. The user can create his own symbols for subcircuits. These symbols created by you will later incorporate the external netlist into the SPICE3/HSPICE netlist.

SPICECAD allows you to use your own user-defined variables for the definition of parameter values like resistors, MOS transistor geometries and so on and so forth.

The database SPICECAD creates consists of simple ASCII files which can easily be understood and edited for your yery own purposes, for example, if you wish to change the name of a model-file ( replace-string 'nmos4' 'nbsim2' ) of all mos transistors in the circuit.

SPICECAD supports the library principle, which means that symbols which describe deeper hierarchy levels ( levels below the top level ) are stored in subdirectories (this is a can , not a must). If you want to replace all symbols of a certain type by a symbol of another type , you simply change the library search path, instead of having to replace all elements.

  However, please note that SPICECAD does not support global search and replace operations.

SPICECAD has full backannotation capabilities. DC-OP , DC-TRANSFER, AC and TRAN- analyses - results can be displayed by the click of your mouse. DC-Voltages, currents and device information can also be displayed by mouseclicks. This backanotation process is possible not only when using the SPICE3 simulator. Furthermore, when using HSPICE or TITAN, backannotation is as easy as using the built-in simulator.

Zoomin, Zoomout and a measure function are implemented for the postprocessing of these results. Additionally, a UPN waveform calculator is available which can perform unary and binary calculations on the simulation results : +,-,*,/, FFT, LOG, DIFF, INT, y**2 , (and so on) are implemented.

Plotting of schematics and simulation results in HPGL and POSTSCRIPT is possible.

SPICECAD gives you the following three additional simulation tools which are not available in SPICE3 :

Any ideas and suggestions, as to other simulation tools? Please contact martin.maschmann@t-online.de . We look forward to hear from you.


next up previous contents
Next: Installation Up: SPICECAD The Schematic Entry Previous: Contents
Martin Maschmann
1999-10-10