Define a circuit¶

SLiCAP requires a SPICE-like netlist of a circuit as input. It converts a hierarchical netlist into matrix equations with the aid of the ‘Modified Nodal Analysis’ method.

You can generate a netlist from a schematic drawing program, or by entering it manually in an ASCII editor.

Netlist generation for SLiCAP is supported for schematics created with:

gSchem using the corresponding SLiCAP symbol library and the ‘gnet-spice-noqsi’ netlist plugin
LTSPICE using the corresponding SLiCAP symbol library

Create a circuit netlist¶

Differences between SPICE and SLiCAP netlist¶

Many schematic capture programs can generate Spice netlist from schematics. However, the netlist syntax for SLiCAP slightly differs from the standard SPICE syntax. The differences are listed in the section SLiCAP netlist syntax. For this reason, the netlist syntax associated with built-in schematic symbols of schematic capture packages needs to be adapted to generate correct SLiCAP netlists.

SLiCAP schematic symbols for LTspice, gschem, and lepton-eda are available in the LTspice/, gSchem/symbols/, and lepton-eda/symbols/ directories in the user install path (default ~/SLiCAP).

Automatic generation of a netlist¶

SLiCAP can create netlists from schematics created with LTspice (MSWindows, Linux), gSchem (MSWindows, Linux, MAC), and lepton-eda (Linux, MAC).

Below the syntax for generation of the netlist file myCircuit.cir from the ‘gSchem’ schematic file myCircuit.sch or from the ‘LTspice’ schematic file myCircuit.asc in the project directory. The title of the circuit needs to be added separately. It will be placed at the beginning of the netlist file and used in the table of contents of html reports.

>>> # Netlist generation from LTspice schematic files:
>>> makeNetlist('myCircuit.asc', 'My Circuit Title') # Use the *LTspice* netlister.
>>> #
>>> # Netlist generation from gschem, or lepton-eda schematic files:
>>> #
>>> makeNetlist('myCircuit.sch', 'My Circuit Title') # Use the *gnet-spice-noqsi* netlister.

Tthe makeNetlist() function inserts a title line at the start of the netlist file.