Guys, report any problem with Qspice, and do check revision history after noticing any program update. There were 3 or 4 program updates yesterday. My problem was actually solved some 2 hours after reporting it to Mike Engelhardt via supplied contact email address. 😳 
With that development tempo, he can’t reply back and explain, but you will eventually notice in the revision history.
Simulation works now and I’m comparing results with LTSpice.
With that development tempo, he can’t reply back and explain, but you will eventually notice in the revision history.
Simulation works now and I’m comparing results with LTSpice.
Is it possible to somehow open or import the ltspice .asc files into QSpice without redrawing everything?
There's a thread on this very question in the QSPICE forum here:
https://forum.qorvo.com/t/open-or-convert-an-ltspice-schematic/14156/11
It seems the short answer to your question is no. It is possible to export a netlist from LTspice and run that in QSPICE, but not .asc or asy files.
https://forum.qorvo.com/t/open-or-convert-an-ltspice-schematic/14156/11
It seems the short answer to your question is no. It is possible to export a netlist from LTspice and run that in QSPICE, but not .asc or asy files.
Qspice was only released 3 months ago.
KiCad, for example, was released in 1992 (31 years ago), and took seven major versions to today.
Perhaps unrealistic demands upon free software, directly supported by the author, are a bit misplaced?
KiCad, for example, was released in 1992 (31 years ago), and took seven major versions to today.
Perhaps unrealistic demands upon free software, directly supported by the author, are a bit misplaced?
I may have to get in on that forum and ask a few questions. A few months back I asked on the LTSpice thread here (and eevblog) about any possible documentation on the LTSpice .asc file format, but got no response. I've done a little bit, it seems each "command" has its own list of parameters and further "commands" can modify it. My main immediate need was to change the values of a string of resistors to a new set of values. I'm almost where I can do that, but there's the deeper idea of understanding everything, and perhaps reformatting and spitting it all back out, like a prettyprinter for a schematic. Now I have to look at Qspice files (I presume/hope these are also ASCII, post #42 strongly suggests much of it is the same format) and see if it's feasible to translate between them.
Unfortunately this could become a rabbit hole that is only indirectly related to audio.
Unfortunately this could become a rabbit hole that is only indirectly related to audio.
As for KiCAD, mostly just bad focus and decisions.
For the longest time you basically had to script and code everything together with all kinds of things that were totally non standard.
They put a lot of time in the autorouter, which still works meh (as most other ones do as well)
Pcb designers are mostly not fulltime programmers, so on a professional level, nobody took that serious.
They also wasted a silly amount of time to a spice simulator, while everyone is either using MicroCap (which is free now), PSpice or Ltspice (basically the defacto standard).
And now we have yet another flavor QSpice.
I don't mind something better and new, but the focus seems to be (again) mostly on the technical stuff, not ease of use and interface.
Which is still rather sluggish and feels dated.
The biggest issues I have with LTSpice are mostly small things.
Like not being able to lock the graph and many of these little things.
Vote with your money. Only pay for simulators which include the features YOU deem critical; don't reward mediocrity by paying for unacceptable software.
I've used LTSPICE over a number of years for work. From my perspective the biggest issue is speed. Take a reasonablely complex circuit and try optimising a set of component values. It takes hours with the designs I'm working on. The issue is poor usage of multiple processor cores.
Recently I decided to try kicad/ngspice and see if that was capable of any speed up. It took about a week to master ngspice to the point that I could do a simulation run of a circuit we are working on. There are quite a few rough edges, but I think nearly everything we do on windows/ltspice can be done with linux/kicad/ngspice. Using the same PSPICE device models and schematics I can see some difference in the simulation results compared to ngspice. That is something under investigation. The big issue is that ngspice is even slower than ltspice. It only uses a single processor core.
Apart from kicad I think Eagle and quite a few others include ngspice in their tools.
It is difficult to get effective multicore usage with sparse matrix algorithms. Hopefully Mike will put some work into this. For me this is more important that the GUI.
Hmm... Have a virtual win in vmware in your distro. Did that with Aimspice in W2k on ubuntu and mint, tina in w7/10 on mx I use now might work too.
Yeah, that's a issue indeed. Terrible alignments, could not invoke any simu really. Just opinion.
Started with vax-vms ages ago, aimspice, orcad, no real problems. LT is not my suit.
Now engaged with Tina, but no labeling possible... sigh.
Let's see what Qspice is able to.
Errr. You want commercial circuit designs we are currently developing? No.
Partition the schematic editor, simulation engine and data display functions in to separate components/applications? That is sort of how the KiCad/NgSpice setup works. My perspective is that the technical bit is the whole point of the simulation software. It is convenient to have a nice schematic editor to generate a net list and it greatly reduces the chance of error.
Haha, no obviously not 😉
But maybe something similar?
Reason why I am asking, is that what I very often see, is that people just simulate way to much at once.
The goal is just to simulate important chunks of the schematic.
Rather than try to put the entire PCB into your simulation.
