VLSI Design Tools Manual PSPICE(1.VLSI) NAME pspice - prepare an input file for the Spice circuit simula- tor SYNOPSIS pspice [-rm] [-nos2s] [-d defsfile] [-c configfile] [-e exp- file] basename DESCRIPTION Pspice is a shell script for preparing Spice input from information from several sources. Pspice runs sim2spice to convert from a basename.sim format circuit description to a Spice-compatible description and modifies the sim2spice node label translation table to be acceptable Spice comments. It then runs spcpp to translate a pseudo-Spice formatted file that contains symbolic node labels to a Spice-acceptable file. Finally, pspice concatenates the circuit description file, the translation table, a file of untranslated Spice input, and the translated Spice input into a single file named basename.spcin. This file is usually an acceptable Spice input file. The optional parameters can be used to cause parts of this process to be skipped. The options and parameters are: -nos2s Suppresses the execution of the sim2spice step. -rm Indicates that the files created in intermedi- ate steps are to be deleted. -d defsfile Specifies a file to be used as a sim2spice definitions file. -c configfile Specifies a configfile that contains SPICE .MODEL cards that are to be included (untrans- lated) in the final output. In addition, if a configfile is specified, sim2spice is called with -c option. If the -c configfile command line option is not used, the technology param- eters specified by a .cadrc file are used. Otherwise the configfile is used to specify the technology parameters. In this case, it is not necessary to provide a defsfile, since these statements can be included in the con- figfile. If sim2spice is unable to open the configfile specified on the command line, the directory $UW_VLSI_TOOLS/lib/technology is searched for configfile. If sim2spice still can not open it, then it aborts. In case -c option is specified without a configfile name, a typical config file from the directory Northwest LIS Release 3Last change: 7/15/88 1 VLSI Design Tools Manual PSPICE(1.VLSI) $UW_VLSI_TOOLS/lib/technology is read. -e expfile Specifies a file that contains pseudo-input for Spice. Spcpp will interpret strings in expfile that are bracketed by '<' and '>' as node names to be translated into spice node numbers using the translation table (base- name.names) created by sim2spice. Lines con- taining bracketed tokens are converted into Spice comments. It is intended that expfile contain Spice commands that describe the experiment to be simulated on the circuit. The ability to use mnemonic node names makes the preparation of Spice input much easier and it means that the description of the experiment need only be specified once, even if the cir- cuit is modified and reextracted. If expfile is not specified then spcpp is not executed. basename Specifies the base name for the files describ- ing the circuit. If sim2spice is run then a file named basename.sim must exist. If sim2spice is not run then the files basename.names and basename.spice must exist. FILES basename.sim circuit description input to sim2spice defsfile optional sim2spice defs input basename.names modified sim2spice translation table output. This is read by spcpp (*) basename.spice sim2spice output Spice format circuit ele- ment definitions (*) configfile file "basename.model" is created which con- tains optional Spice .MODEL commands from configfile, to be included in basename.spcin expfile input to spcpp containing pseudo-spice com- mands describing the experiment to be simu- lated basename.spcx translated output from spcpp (*) basename.spcin The Spice input deck created by concatenat- ing basename.spice, basename.names, basename.model, and basename.spcx Note: Files marked (*) are deleted by the -rm option. SEE ALSO chconfig(1.vlsi) sim2spice(1.vlsi), spcpp(1.vlsi) spice(1.vlsi) mextra(1.vlsi), cifplot(CAD1) Northwest LIS Release 3Last change: 7/15/88 2 VLSI Design Tools Manual PSPICE(1.VLSI) AUTHOR Robert Fowler (Northwest LIS, University of Washington) MODIFICATIONS Akhilesh Tyagi (Northwest LIS, University of Washington) -- added -c option. deleted -m option. DIAGNOSTICS The error messages are intended to be self explanatory. Note that sim2spice and spcpp produce their own error mes- sages. BUGS The command line is long enough to tempt a user to call pspice from yet another shell script. A better way to do this is to set up an alias for pspice with the commonly used options already set. Northwest LIS Release 3Last change: 7/15/88 3