From experience, can someone please advise what is the most strightforward way to get from an LTSpice schematic file to a low end program capable of producing PCB manufacturing files, eg. layout, routing and drill plot capablilties?
I had been re-drawing in EagleCad for the latter purposes. But I am hoping there is a more direct way.
I use Pulsonix for schematic capture and PCB layout. It has an integrated SPICE, but the SPICE schematics have to be edited, of course, as the PCB parts are different from the SPICE ones. There are plenty of other PCB packages with SPICE.
"Claus Jensen" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
Hello Claus,
LTspice can create netlists for some PCB-CAD programs but not for EAGLE. Even with those programs, it's only useful to compare netlists. The main reason for this limited use is the missing physical package and pin-number information.
I recommend to draw the schematic in EAGLE for the PCB. Then create a SPICE netlist from the EAGLE-schematic and directly run it with the LTspice simulator
If you want a schematic in LTspice from the EAGLE drawing, you could use the ulp from the LTspice-Yahoo-group(Files>Util>sym2ltspice.zip) to convert EAGLE symbols to LTspice symbols. This may help for faster re-drawing the schematic.
*-*-have-equivalents-in-*-other-packages+supports+magical.tool+doesn't+flawed+limitations-*-what-will-import-successfully+retrieve-data+*-*-*-limited-*-list-of-compatible-versions+zz-zz+qq-qq+exist Flanagan's Beige Bag suggestion seems the most painless in this regard.
Forgive Leon, he gets a free case of beer whenever he writes about Pulsonix, even when it has absolutely nothing to with the question posed. :-)
If you're just trying to build a PCB, you can often get away with minimal editing. I've done filters this way in Pulsonix -- change the voltage source and load resistor into SMA connectors and -- poof! -- everything is all set to go to PCB. It's when you need a real BOM or other manufacturing data that it's often just as fast to competely re-enter the schematic in another program.
To the O.P.: If you look at LTSpice's help file, it'll tell you (page 22, "PCB Netlist Extraction") what programs it can export netlists to. ExpressPCB is supported and free; you might check that out.
Yes, but if you want to use Linear Tech parts, you're pretty much stuck using LTSpice since the models are specific to various features that LTSpice provides. There are legitimate engineering reasons for this -- building switching power converter models for "generic" SPICE does tend to make for very slow convergence. Although there are SPICE packages out there with a lot more options and features than LTSpice, there are also plenty that are far more limited, and not free (as in beer) like LTSpice _is_.
Although there are SPICE packages out there with a lot
Can you recomend the SPICE packages you refer to that have more options than LTSpice? Preferably free or lower price point. Although LTSpice is fast and easy to use, the component library is quite limited by design.
Well, I cringe to suggest this, but PSpice is still quite powerful, despite Cadence's best attempts to kill or at least neuter it. It has a very powerful behavioral modeling tool built-in that makes it quite easy to build new component models from empirical (or data sheet) measurements. There is a guy who made something similar for LTspice's VDMOS transistors, but PSpice can do it for pretty much any device type. PSpice is not at all cheap, though, so this probably doesn't qualify for what you're after. Download the old PSpice applications guide at
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and you'll get a feel for some of the extra features that are unique to PSpice.
SI-Metrix, which AFAIK is most inexpensively obtained by purchasing a copy of "Pulsonix SPICE" (Leon's favorite package) has more based graphing and probing options that LTspice does. Since Pulsonix's SPICE front end is a generic schematic capture tool, you also get a lot more options on how the schematic is displayed (fonts, drawing features, etc.) than LTspice provides.
Some features which I believe are 100% unique to LTspice include:
-- Use of ASCII files for everything; really quite convenient.
-- Very easy use of .WAV files for signal inputs and outputs
My experience is that when you first start you spend a lot of time performing library maintenance, but after a few projects you have most of the common symbols drawn the way you like them and you only have to draw a new symbol every once in awhile. Associating symbols with new models is pretty fast and easy in all modern SPICE tools.
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