Advanced debug/diagnostic support in PSpice for Convergence

PSpice now supports advanced options to help users with debug information for simulation convergence errors due to expressions present in the circuit. Users can also get an advanced diagnostic report in the form of an Excel/CSV sheet with information captured about any simulation run.

Now, the expressions present in the circuit which leads to abnormal values can be pointed out in a .out file when the simulation leads to an error.

Modify the schematic by including “.options EXPR_DEBUG” in the circuit netlist. To do this:

On the schematic page, select Place > Text and enter the text as shown below. Then, click OK to place the text anywhere in the schematic.

Run the simulation. The output file will now show the warning, listing the expressions which are leading to the error, as shown below.

Diagnostic report in Excel/CSV format

PSpice now also supports advanced diagnostic reporting in the form of an Excel/CSV sheet for any simulation to provide additional details, such as:

• Simulation settings: Lists all the simulation parameters with their set values
• Accepted Delta: Timestep at each time point
• Reject count at current time: Number of rejections at any time
• Device causing the error
• Type of failure: Local Truncation Error (LTE)/Newton Raphson (NR)
• Limiting signal with its values for previous three timesteps
• Limiting source name
• Simulation plots:
  • Accepted Delta vs. time
  • Rejection count vs. time

You can enable the diagnostic report from the Simulation Settings UI, as shown below.

Select a value of DEBUG from the drop-down list to generate the required format report.

The diagnostic report will be generated, containing all the data and the graphs.

Team DesignTech
Cadence Design Systems