Qucs-S: Qucs with SPICE

Download links

The latest stable release is Qucs-S-24.1.0 (Installation instructions...)

Contribution guide

Qucs-S is open for everyone's contribution. See here for contribution guide.

Donations

Qucs-S accepts donations using Boosty: https://boosty.to/qucs_s

News

Simulation example with Qucs-S and Ngspice


(More screenshots...)

Publications

Qucs-S is also a research software. Check our publication list.

What is Qucs-S?

Qucs-S is a circuit simulation program based onQucs circuit simulator. The "S" letter indicates SPICE. The purpose of the Qucs-S project is to use free SPICE circuit simulation kernels with the GUI based on Qt toolkit. It merges the power of SPICE and the simplicity of the Qucs GUI. Qucs-S is not a simulator by itself, but it requires to use an external simulation backend with it. Qucs-S allows to use the following open-source simulation kernels:

Screenshots

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Main features

Installation

Linux

AppImage for all Linux distributions

You can run Qucs-S on all Linux platforms using AppImage without building it from source. AppImage already includes Qt4 libraries and you don't need to install them explicitly. Simple make AppImage executable and run it from console or your file manager. Please note that AppImage doesn't include Ngspice and you need to install them using system package manager.

Binary packages

The usage of binary packages is the preffered way to get Qucs-S.

Building from source

If binary packages are not available for your distrubution, then you will need to build Qucs-S from source: The complete command sequence to build Qucs-S is following:

tar xvfz qucs-s-0.0.21.tar.gz
cd qucs-s-0.0.21
mkdir builddir
cd builddir
cmake ..
make
make install

The last command make install should be executed from root user. It will install Qucs-S into default prefix /usr/local/. Use -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=... to override the default locationNo additional configure options are needed now.

Slackware SlackBuild

Slack Build script is available for Slackware distribution. It will download and compile Qucs-S automatically. You will obtain the binary Qucs-S package. Perform the following steps to install Qucs-S:
  1. Clone this repository:
    git clone https://github.com/ra3xdh/QucsS.SlackBuild
  2. Run SlackBuild as root:
    cd QucsS.S.SlackBuild
    ./qucs-S.SlackBuild
  3. Install txz package with installpkg command

FreeBSD

Qucs could be installed on FreeBSD using ports or binary package.

Windows

Windows portable package could be downloaded as zipped distribution. Unpack and launch qucs-s.exe from bin subdirectory. Two windows packages are available:

You need to download and install Ngspice and/or XYCE manually from official websites: http://ngspice.org/ https://xyce.sandia.gov respectively.

Important note for Ngspice on Windows: Install package strictly to the C:\SPICE64 location. Otherwise XSPICE model will not work! If you are getting strange errors with Ngspice on Windows and cannot simulate even simple circuit, please check that Ngspice is installed strictly in C:\SPICE64.

Usage

Linux

Run qucs-s from the the command line or launch Qucs-S icon in your desktop environment menu after the installation. You will need to select default simulation backend at the first run. You can change it later in the application settings.

Windows

For portable package run the qucs-s.exe binary to launch application. You may create a desktop shortcut for it.

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Authors

Contribution guide

Steps to contribute

Source code of the Qucs-S is hosted at the Github in the following repository: https://github.com/ra3xdh/qucs_s. You need to clone this repository if you wish to contribute.

git clone -b current https://github.com/ra3xdh/qucs_s
cd qucs_s
git checkout -b your_feature
Use CMake to compile Qucs-S. After you make changes, prepare a pull request to Qucs-S repository.

Branching model

Currently there are two main branches in my home Qucs repository:

Release tarball is obtained from master with some Bash script. I distribute only Qucs-GUI and some utilities with Qucs-S package.

My changes only concentrated on GUI side, and you need to rebuild GUI only to test Qucs-S. You may take Qucsator from usual Qucs installation.

Build instruction (development branches)

For qucs-s-stable you need to set WITH_SPICE cmake key. Autotools will not work. Perform the following commnads to build all: git clone https://github.com/ra3xdh/qucs_s/
cd qucs_s
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/some_path
make

Then install and launch qucs-s executable. (to top...)

Documentation

Publications

Qucs-S is not a simple circuit simulator, but also a research software. Please cite our articles, if you are using Qucs-S in your research.
  1. Brinson, M. E., and Kuznetsov, V. (2016) A new approach to compact semiconductor device modelling with Qucs Verilog-A analogue module synthesis. Int. J. Numer. Model., 29: 1070-1088. (BibTeX)
  2. D. Tomaszewski, G. Głuszko, M. Brinson, V. Kuznetsov and W. Grabinski, "FOSS as an efficient tool for extraction of MOSFET compact model parameters," 2016 MIXDES - 23rd International Conference Mixed Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, Lodz, 2016, pp. 68-73. (BibTeX)
  3. M. Brinson and V. Kuznetsov, "Qucs-0.0.19S: A new open-source circuit simulator and its application for hardware design," 2016 International Siberian Conference on Control and Communications (SIBCON), Moscow, 2016, pp. 1-5. (BibTeX)
  4. M. Brinson and V. Kuznetsov, "Improvements in Qucs-S equation-defined modelling of semiconductor devices and IC's," 2017 MIXDES - 24th International Conference "Mixed Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, Bydgoszcz, 2017, pp. 137-142. (BibTeX)
  5. M. Brinson and V. Kuznetsov, "Extended behavioural device modelling and circuit simulation with Qucs-S" International Journal of Electronics, 2017, pp.1 - 14 (BibTeX)