This design kit is intended for working with SPICE-based simulators. Since this kit is not aimed at any specific commercial package, it does not support any advanced features of these packages. You may wish to use this design kit as a basis for building up your own version that more closely supports your favourite package.
Custom Menus
This design kit defines a number of custom menu commands under the SPICE title.
Set Spice Params - This puts up a simple prompt box allowing you to enter a text Spice parameter into all selected devices in the current circuit. This value entered is placed in the Spice attribute field and will be appended to the associated device line in the netlist. This value is not check for validity.
Generate Netlist - This generates a simple, generic SPICE netlist format from the current design.
Generate Error Report - This runs an error check on the current design and generates a report of any errors encountered. Errors that have previously been "marked as OK" (see below) will not appear in this report. The checks run include:
- no Spice code
- bad device names
- bad signal names
- duplicate signal names
Mark as OK - This command marks as OK all errors currently showing as errors (i.e. that would appear if you ran the Error report). This means that they will not appear in subsequent reports.
Unmark All - This removes all Mark as OK settings in the current design. That is, all circuit objects will be checked by the Error Report command.
Open ReadMe - This command opens this file in SimpleText.
Hierarchy Mode
The netlist generator in this design kit will work with any hierarchy mode. The template provided is set the Pure mode, which is appropriate for creating hierarchical designs for SPICE. In this mode, nested subcircuits will appear in the netlist as SPICE macros.
Power and Ground Connections
SPICE packages assume that a net named "0" (i.e. zero) is the common point in the circuit. A SPICE Ground symbol is provided in the SPICE Pseudo Devs library which causes the attached net to be thus named.
Attribute Fields Used
The netlist generator refers to the following attribute fields:
Name
Spice
Symbol Libraries
This design kit includes two libraries:
Spice Lib - contains symbols for the standard Spice primitive models. Each symbol has its Name.Spice attribute set to the appropriate name prefix for that model.
Spice Pseudo Devs - contains pseudo device symbols like page and port connectors. The only one specific to SPICE is the SPICE Ground. This symbol has the characteristic that it causes the attached net to be named "0" to match SPICE ground convention.
DesignType Value
The value "Generic SPICE Pure" is placed in the DesignType attribute field to identify designs created with this design kit. This value is checked by the netlist generator.
