Spice - reload simulation to simulate further

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jkautsch - 09 Jul 2008 10:32 GMT

My problem is that I have a very large spice circuit to simulate and I
have to do this on a remote computer which is not very stable. My
simulations takes more then one day, but the remote computer often
crash before my simulation is finished (the crashes don't have
anything to do with my simulations). My question: Is it possible that
I simulate with spice only "a few" timesteps (so the simulation would
take i.e. 3 hours), so I can save my results then and start a new
simulation which starts at the end of the old simulation?

Until now I only know how to start always from zero on. I don't know
how to go on with a former simulation. Any suggestions? (I hope it's
not a too stupid question)

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qrk - 09 Jul 2008 21:01 GMT

>My problem is that I have a very large spice circuit to simulate and I
>have to do this on a remote computer which is not very stable. My
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>how to go on with a former simulation. Any suggestions? (I hope it's
>not a too stupid question)

Can you run the simulation on LTspice? Then you can use a local
computer that is stable. LTspice is free and works as well as the
expensive Spice engines out there.

--
Mark

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jkautsch - 14 Jul 2008 16:50 GMT

Hi!

I can't fix the computer, because it is a server of a company and I
don't have admin rights. (And the admins seem to be not able to fix it
by themselves)

And I also have to use this spice, because it is a modified spice plus
additional components to which I don't have access rights to copy it
(and the company don't want to give me a copy) - but I need it for my
simulation.

Until now I found out that at least Cadence Spice has a store and
restore functionality:
Look for "continue/trstore" there:
http://www.ece.uci.edu/eceware/cadence/cspiceref/chap4.html#673455

Also SIMetrix (another Spice Simulator) has something called
"Transient restart".
Quote: "Transient analysis can be restarted after the stop time has
been reached. Useful when a circuit takes longer to settle than
originally expected." (http://www.catena.uk.com/site/products/
SIMetrix.htm)

But I didn't find anything in spice3 (which is as far as I see the
basis of the modified spice of the company)

Regards, Jan

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Joel Koltner - 14 Jul 2008 22:13 GMT

> Also SIMetrix (another Spice Simulator) has something called
> "Transient restart".

I don't think this is quite what you want... AFAIK, their "transient restart"
really just means, "keep simulating for longer... since this whole 'stop time'
bit was 100% artificial anyway..." (For a long time they didn't even have a
"stop simulation" button on their GUI -- only "pause," because they figured
that there wasn't a whole lot of point in "stop and go no further" -- which
originally struck me as odd, but these days makes a lot of sense. They added
a "stop" button to make people who felt it odd happy, and then took what they
always had and made it a feature!)

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Electronics Forum / CAD / July 2008

Spice - reload simulation to simulate further