TSPICE versus PSPICE? Why does TSPICE even exist for EE's?

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bmwreyeder

Joined Nov 21, 2017
1
Our professor just assigned a HW where we are supposed to type a circuit into TSPICE and see how it compares to hand calculations.

I go to YouTube and Google for TSPICE tutorials and BJT example circuits... and nothing.
I do the same but with PSPICE and there exists an abundance of tutorials.

Why does coding a circuit exist when you can just drag and drop components? Is there a way to build in PSPICE then convert to TSPICE code?

Putting that aside, some help on where to begin would be great. The circuit consists of a BJT with various resistors and capacitors.

This is what I have so far:

---------------------------------------------------------------------
.model n-type npn(Level=1 BF=100)

VDD VDD GND DC 15V
VSS VSS GND DC 0V

Q1 3 2 1 n-type

.ac Dec 0.1 10000
.probe Vm|4|
.end
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you!
 

SLK001

Joined Nov 29, 2011
1,549
You mean the professor just threw you students into the deep end? There was no class discussion on using TSPICE? Or, did you skip that class?
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,979
SPICE is just a simulator program (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis). It takes text files as input and produces text files as output.

PSPICE, TSPICE, HSPICE, LTSPICE, and a bunch of others are just enhancements to SPICE to add features or support for device types not in the basic SPICE. As far as I know, they are all text file input and text file output.

The graphical interfaces (your "drag and drop components" mode) are essentially separate add-ons to make using the simulators easier and more productive. Those add-ons are what most people think of as being the simulator, but they aren't. They are nice and they DO increase the ease of use and the productivity greatly, but they also limit what you can do because you limited to what they support and none of them can capture the full power of being able to work with the input (and to a lesser degree the output) files directly. Learning what the input files are and how your schematic capture program turns your graphical files into them is extremely valuable as you will gain the ability to generate the files the normal way and then go in and tweak them to do something you need to do that isn't possible with the IDE interface.
 
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