The previous example covers enough concepts to model arbitrarily complex networks of resistors and sources. These are essentially linear circuits that have no relation to time. A more elaborate example is presented below:
eg2.ckt
NETWORK OF RESISTORS AND VOLTAGE SOURCES V1 2 1 10 V2 4 3 5 V3 0 3 3 R1 1 2 220 R2 2 3 4.7k R3 4 5 3.3k R4 3 5 10k R5 0 1 22k R6 0 5 15k
Run this with:
gnucap> get eg2.ckt gnucap> print dc v(1) v(2) v(3) v(4) v(5) gnucap> dc # v(1) v(2) v(3) v(4) v(5) 0. -10.712 -0.71161 -3. 2. 0.65161 gnucap>
Note that this is about the limit of what can be done with these two components. Other components that offer further possibilities are the current source (any component with a name that begins with “I” is a current source) and the dependent sources:
| first letter of name | output type | input type |
| E | voltage | voltage |
| F | current | current |
| G | current | voltage |
| H | voltage | current |
Each of these has a gain value expressing the relation between its output and its input and they allow the modeling of linear amplifiers and other such devices. As mentioned above, none of these components understand time nor can they be used to represent a nonlinear device. Thus, any network constructed from the components that have been seen so far will be reducible to a Thevenin or Norton equivalent circuit when considered from the point of view of one particular node and the ground node 0.
eg3.ckt
NETWORK OF RESISTORS AND DEPENDENT SOURCES * * Reduce this complicated collection of dependencies * down to a single Thevenin equivalent between node 2 and * the ground node 0 * I1 1 4 2 V1 1 0 5 E1 5 2 1 3 0.4 F1 5 6 R1 3e-2 G1 2 3 4 6 1.3 H1 3 0 R3 1 R1 4 5 2.2 R2 1 2 470 R3 0 2 330 R4 3 6 1k R5 5 6 1e4 * * Look at the voltage at node 2 and the impedance looking into node 2 * .print dc v(2) z(2) .dc .end
Notice that this example file contains some lines that begin with a dot. These are command lines and behave exactly like the commands you type in interactive mode. These command lines are dotted because of the old SPICE tradition of executing all of the component lines first and then the command lines, gnucap doesn't bother with this, it executes every line in the order that it sees them, but it still follows the old idea of dotting the command lines as a little tribute to SPICE and to make it easier to see what is going on when you read a .ckt file.
When you run this example, you might try to run in “spice batch mode”, to deal with the first line, and to set the input language to spice.
gnucap -b eg3.ckt
And (all going well) you will see that node 2 is equivalent to a source of 54.343 volts in series with an 0.83888 ohm resistor. You should also notice that gnucap never goes into interactive command mode. This is because of the ”.end” command that tells gnucap to finish at this point. You may want to use this example circuit in interactive mode, to achieve this you could either delete the ”.end” command, or (from the system prompt) type:
gnucap get eg3.ckt
Then you can use other interactive commands. Note that you can modify the circuit interactively too. Consider adding another resistor by typing the following at the interactive prompt:
build R3 R6 3 4 12k <blank line>
Which allows you to adjust the topology of the circuit in memory. This includes adding components and modifying existing components. You can interactively remove components from the circuit using the “delete” command or you can wipe out the entire circuit using the “clear” command. To put the adjusted topology into a file you use the save command:
save eg3_mod.ckt quit cat eg3_mod.ckt
Looking at what you have saved you will probably notice a few things: firstly, gnucap has remembered your comment lines and command lines and saved them too; secondly, your extra line was inserted into the file before the line containing component “R3”, this is caused by the argument on the “build” command and allows you to insert your build lines where you want them.