When a schematic has been set up, it can be simulated. This automatically creates the required netlist, saves the simulation results, and displays them for analysis in the Waveform Viewer.

About this task

Simulating a schematic lets you view the currents and voltages at specified points of interest over time. The simulation is controlled using the toolbar at the bottom of the Simulation Environment view

Note that rerunning a simulation overwrites any previous results from simulating the same schematic. If you want to be able to access the results of an earlier simulation, you must first make a copy of them in the file system. The results are stored in a subfolder of the project folder with the name sim-schematicName-Default. If you make a copy of that folder, you can later open the .csdf file in it using the File > Open command in Waveform Viewer.

Before you begin

The schematic must be completed, as described in Working with schematics. It must be displayed in the frontmost tab.

The simulation must be set up, as described in Setting up a simulation.

Procedure

  1. If you want to review the netlist before running the schematic, click the Create Netlist button .

    The netlist is created and shown in a new tab.

    You can edit the netlist in this tab and save the changes for use in the simulation. However, we recommend that you do not do so and instead make any required adjustments in the schematic. If you do edit the netlist, do so only with the utmost caution, because any editing errors can invalidate the simulation results.

  2. Click either or to run the simulation.

    You can switch between the two buttons by clicking the triangle in their lower-right corner and choosing the desired button from the menu that opens.

    Normally, you run the simulation using the button. This recreates the netlist and immediately runs the simulation. However, if you have already generated the netlist and edited it (as described in step 1), this overwrites your changes. In that case, use the button which runs the simulation using the existing netlist, without recreating it first.

    If a simulation runs too long, you can abort it by clicking . In that case, no simulation results are created and the Waveform Viewer is not opened.

Results

The simulation is run with the specified settings. Diagnostic output is written to the tabs of the Output view. The Waveform Viewer is opened, displaying the simulation results.

What to do next

You can review the simulation results in the Waveform Viewer, as described in Evaluating simulations. If the Waveform Viewer does not open automatically, you can open it manually by clicking .

You can review the log messages generated during the simulation by clicking .

You can access the files generated by the simulation by clicking .