The spice .step directive isn’t supported by the KiCAD spice engine and simulating it with a .command routine fails with a viewport access error. Is there any practical way to run a series of simulations whilst varying a parameter? I’ve been using LTSpice for years and second only to the ability to plot a fourier series, the .step directive is probably the most useful tool in the arsenal when dealing with audio/radio designs.
3 Likes
Which KiCad version are you using?
KiCad-nightly (Expected to be released as KiCad V8 this month) has quite a lot of enhancements for the simulator, but I don’t know if this is one of them.
Using 7.0.10+1, Jan5 2014 so it’s fairly up-to-date.
2014 is quite old 
But as I wrote in my previous post, KiCad-Nightly has many spice related improvements, and it is also close to release now. I suggest you give it a try. You can install it easily along with the stable KiCad version. For the rest, I don’t use spice much, and can’t comment on it.
Currently there is no .step command available in ngspice and its KiCad interface.
In plain ngspice a script (see ngspice control language tutorial) may be used. This is however not available in KiCad/ngspice.
You should add this item to the wishlist at Issues · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab .
Would also be very interested in this feature! I’m surprised that not many more people miss this functionality.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.