kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

After much cursing and many config attempts, I finally have a working
spice simulation solution on windows.  I'm guessing similar parallels
can be applied to osx as well.


Option A: running from a mingw32 or mingw64 terminal.

1) copy the installed spinit file (by default will be in
${MINGW-PACKAGE-PREFIX}/share/ngspice/scripts) to ~/.spiceinit.
2) change the msys2 paths (/mingw##) in ~/.spiceinit to absolute windows
paths with / not \ (in my case C:/msys64/mingw##).
3) Launch kicad.exe from the terminal.

I realize this is not very elegant and will only work with either the 64
or 32 bit mingw (not both without editing .spiceinit) but it works and
is handy for mingw users.


Option B: configuring windows and run kicad from a shortcut.

1) locate the installed spinit file
($INSTALL_PATH/share/ngspice/scripts) and change the msys2 paths
(/mingw##) to absolute windows paths with / not \ (in my case
C:/msys64/mingw##).
2) Run kicad, open the config paths dialog, and add an environment
variable SPICE_LIB_DIR with path to the spinit file minus the last
"scripts" path ($INSTALL_PATH/share/ngspice).

I also tried copying the .spiceinit file from option A to %USERPROFILE%
but that did not work when launching kicad from a shortcut.

Option B a cleaner solution but still requires some configuration by the
user.  This is going to be an interesting problem to solve for our
package devs.  We need to figure out a way to generate or modify the
spinit file base on where it gets installed by the installer on
platforms where this is relevant.  We will also either have to set an
the SPICE_LIB_DIR environment variable or teach ngspice how to find the
correct spinit file at run time.

At least now windows users have a way to have the same functional spice
simulation as linux users.

Cheers,

Wayne