Best practice for pin mapping when targeting both SPICE simulation and PCB output?

[hyranno]

Hello.

I want to ask:
How to compensate mismatching pins between KiCAD symbol and SPICE model?

Background

I want to do:

• Run SPICE simulations (via pytest) for sub-circuits to confirm that they work as intended
• Generate files for pcbnew with the confirmed sub-circuits

The problem:
KiCAD symbol and SPICE model has different order of pins.

I want to have the Part which is simultaneously valid for both KiCAD and SPICE.
convert_for_spice will break pins for KiCAD symbol, right?

LLM (Gemini) claims that KiCAD needs pin.num and SPICE needs the order of pins so just sorting do the work.
But I'm not good enough to determine if it is correct.

Thank you!

[devbisme]

Can you provide a specific example that illustrates this problem?

[hyranno]

For example of TPS3899DL01DSER (voltage supervisor / Texas Instruments),
kicad_sym has pins CTR CTS GND VDD SENSE RESET_N with number from 1 to 6.
SPICE model has subckt pins CTR CTS GND RESET_B SENSE VDD in order.
They have different order with slightly different names.
So pin 6 of the Part instantiated like below will be RESET_N for KiCAD and VDD for SPICE.

Part(
    str(tps3899_dir / "PTPS3899DL01DSER.kicad_sym"), 'PTPS3899DL01DSER', TEMPLATE, tool=KICAD,
    footprint = str(tps3899_dir / "DSE0006A-MFG.kicad_mod"),
    model = str(tps3899_dir / "TPS3899DL_TRANS.lib"),
  )

[devbisme]

I have not forgotten you! I haven't found a solution using the current version of SKiDL. I'm trying to think of a way to modify SKiDL without breaking existing SPICE flow.

[devbisme]

I have a possible solution you can install and test:

pip install git+https://github.com/devbisme/skidl@development

Let me know if it solves the problem or not.

[devbisme]

I'll look into it.

[devbisme]

A fix for the first problem exposed by your resistor-divider example is checked into the development branch.

Now I'll take a look at the failure to load the TI SPICE models.

[hyranno]

The resistor-divider example worked on my side as well. 👍

[devbisme]

The problems with the TPS* PSPICE library files are caused by syntax incompatibilities with the InSpice library. I raised an issue with them. You could possibly correct these files manually if this issue is holding you back.

[hyranno]

Understood. I'll wait and see for now.