ckuhlmann
commented
2 years ago Hi Nineen, This tool was written for LTspice to TikZ translation and a lot of the script structure reflects this. What you, however, could do is use some of its design as a starting point for a reverse translation script.
Some points that have proven useful for me:
- Use translation files that describe each TikZ symbol encountered and its translation to LTspice (symbol pins/nodes, coordinate system, symbol representation, attributes). Load (and cache) these translation files dynamically as you encounter TikZ symbols in the source document, so the script functionality can be extended later without having to modify the script itself. Use simple syntax for these translation files so that they are easy to parse and write.
- Use location maps to store the pin/nodes/connection points of objects encountered (in the origin as well as in the destination coordinates). This makes object lookup a lot faster than iterating over all objects.
I'd like to mention though, that the inverse route (TikZ to LT) might be a lot harder, especially if the TikZ is handwritten. (circuit) TikZ allows for a lot of syntactical variations to achieve the same effect. Parsing all style variants might need a full parser, while this script here gets away with a bunch of regExes. There are also a lot of TikZ symbols that have no simulation models in spice. Also, I'm afraid that in the foreseeable future, I won't have any spare time to support you.
I think your suggestion is an is an interesting Idea and might indeed be useful to some people. Maybe you can get together a team to help you with this project.
Nineen
Hello, I am just wondering whether this tool can add a reverse function, say, to convert Tikz code to spice netlist? In this way, the schematic can be written in Tikz, and then sent to Spice for simulation.