What is Reddit's opinion of Ngspice?

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QUCS works well, but isn't SPICE

ngspice works as well, but you would probably want some GUI frontend. I think QUCS can use ngspice, the latest KiCAD can as well, and many others: http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/resources.html#GUIs

It appears ngspice can do everything in a terminal. You'll need to wade through the manual to get a feel for how, but basically you write your netlist by hand, add a control section at the end to say what you want to plot, and then run it in batch mode and it should ASCII print to the terminal by default (or use print statements to print out whatever variables you want)

If you can manage to write it out as a linear system, you could use something matlab pretty easily.

However, more complicated circuits can't always be done that way. For that, it is helpful to have a Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis, aka SPICE. There are some pretty good open source SPICE implementations (since electrical and computer engineers are usually friends, these were some pretty early programs).

http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/

https://www.gnu.org/software/gnucap/gnucap.html

There are also some pretty good free, proprietary simulators (from folks who'd like you to buy their chips). LTSpice was well regarded last I checked.

SPICE has a plain text format (called a Netlist), but many of the SPICE packages come with built in GUIs so you can just point and click the resistors in to place. So, you can usually write the Netlist and run that through the simulator if you want to have your own custom workflow.

As mantra pointed out, SPICE is sort of an "abstract class" that all modern simulators have branched off of. They all have their own languages that aren't fully inter-compatible. None of this has anything to do with Java and what you learned in Java likely won't at all prepare you for writing SPICE netlists. I also agree that you'll need to have at least a basic understanding of circuits to make sense of SPICE netlists, but if you are doing an introductory electronics class you may learn enough to give you the foundation to figure the rest out yourself.

Check out ngspice. It's free and does all the same basics that modern circuit simulators do (including the industry-standard HSPICE). Unlike LTspice, it's not geared towards a specific company's products -- it's just a generic SPICE simulator. It also doesn't have a GUI, but I don't think that will help much if you are focusing on modeling with SPICE -- GUIs are more useful for simulating circuits without having to learn SPICE. For a GUI, you can try out gEDA -- I've never used it, but it will help you make SPICE netlists that work with ngspice.

If you need help learning about SPICE, give me a shout. I work with SPICE netlists every day at my job, including using HSPICE and ngspice. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

NgSpice is libre. When i asked similarly, this was mentioned a bunch, I havent figured out how it works yet though. It has a 550 page manual. Hopefully that is just because it is exhaustive. According to extra/features it does have some stuff with RF.

this manual has some examples, though i cant get them to run easily. They shouldve just given some simple examples for calculating potential/current over time or impedance vs frequency in some simple circuits...

Hello sorry for late reply, seems like your program is not throughly tested in wine, however it works fine according to Wine database, there are some rough edges but it should work fine if you follow the solutions in this link.

Of course you first need to install Wine, to install Wine do the process below:

1-Add 32bit architecture support to your machine(apply the commands one by one):

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

2- Install Wine:

sudo apt install wine wine32 wine64 libwine libwine:i386 fonts-wine winetricks

3- Installation process should be similar to double clicking and installing if you have installed Linux specific file manager like SpaceFM(sudo apt install spacefm), if you want to use Chrome OS's native file manager process should be like below:

3.1. Put your .exe file to Linux Files in Chrome OS's file manager.

3.2. Run your installer in terminal using "wine programname.exe" command

​

As an alternative you can try installing Ngspice as an alternative, it runs native:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install ngspice

And now I've checked the ngspice manual here and (looking at pg 55), this does not match the syntax for defining subcircuit parameters in ngspice.

I'm pretty sure you are just using a lib file meant for a different simulator.

First off, I hope you've been looking at the official cygwin docs because they really are excellent imo. Very in depth, if a bit dense. This page in particular is helpful.

However, I'm hoping this will solve your problem:

>18.4 CygWin >The CygWin interface is similar to the Linux interface (18.3), i.e. console input and X11 graphics output. To avoid the warning of a missing graphical user interface, you have to start the X11 window manager by issuing the commands >$ export DISPLAY=:0.0 >$ xwin -multiwindow -clipboard & inside of the CygWin window before starting ngspice.

From here. Btw that page has a manual table of contents that you need to search with your browser; I'm sure you could figure it out but I found it neat.

If that doesn't work to get the ngspice X window, hopefully somewhere in that section of the ones around it (where the compilation info is) will help you compile it again linking to the X libs. Reply back if you have issues.

Actuate means to cause something to behave in a specific way, so in electronics an actuator is something that does something, an output.

Rotary actuators are called motors.

Linear actuators are sometimes called as such but electric ones are more often called solenoids. The term linear actuator more often being used for hydraulic/pneumatic devices.

Liquid affecting actuators are called pumps.

A relay or contactor could be classed as an actuator, in that it causes a load to be powered or shut off.

What type of actuator are you trying to research?

Maybe English isn't your first language or maybe I have misread your post but it seems like you have bought a paintbrush and you want to create the next Van Gogh without first learning to draw.

The creation of even a simple viable simulator (one with enough components to be useful and that will also return an accurate result) is the sort of project one might choose for a master's thesis, not something one builds in a weekend after a little Googling. It requires a good deal of fundamental knowledge.

The current leading open source circuit simulator is still undergoing significant improvement even after 15 years of work by an army of developers. To gain an idea of the scale of the task take a look here: http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/devel.html

And a fine replacement for the dumbed-down version of the PSpice circuit simulation software they offer to students is the free and open-source Ngspice.

It just got another upgrade, new work being added to a code base that was originally written more than thirty years ago.

ngspice manual states that the default GMIN value is 1E+12, I have set it to 1E+06 as well as 1E+03 , but then this still does not help

> I’m going to give a series of steps that if you don’t attempt them all, I’m not going to respond anymore.

Please allow me some time to try one by one at a time. I do not expect any answers/replies from anyone and this is just a good hobby and pastimes project.

> Are the lengths you’re using minimum for your models?

I am reading http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/external-documents/models/BSIM480_Manual.pdf#page=15

> How long did it take to type up all your net lists & model cards? Where do your simulations run?

I do this using GUI tool called GEDA suite, specifically gschem. Then the netlister will generate a netlist for me based on the schematic sch file I passed to it. Model cards are downloaded from http://bsim.berkeley.edu/models/bsim4/

any of the SPICE engines.

http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/ngspice-eeschema.html

You still need to write SPICE models for parts, or find them.

If you're looking for board-level signal analysis stuff, like for fancy RF design on PCBs where you need to worry about signals goign where they shouldn't, that's not doable in KiCad. Nor is it easy in the expensive software that advertises those features. Chances are you don't need it.

Personally, I'd try to do this lab in ngspice without working with GUI at all. You may try to create a directory to store your circuit text file and place libraries just near this one. Feed simulator then and check its output. Feel free to post it - I could try to help a bit.

Here's your ticket: http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/

Throw it onto an r3.2xlarge for regular CPU calculation with a massive amount of RAM. Or try out CUSPICE on a g2.2xlarge with an NVIDIA compute slice.

Looks cool. For doing things better than the past, simulation is nice :) Havent really evaluated it. Hope a reasonably effective cli interface/library version is going to be available.('so it could be used in other guis.' bodes well) And i mean, really available, not 'possible but you have to figure a lot of stuff out'.

Of course some stuff already exists like ngspice but it doesnt seem sufficiently accessible and doesnt incorporate the Atmega logic.