Documentation

Getting started

• circuitRF Quick Start Run a simulation and read a plot, for engineers who already use circuit simulators.
• Welcome to circuitRF! Libraries, cells, test benches and analyses, explained from the ground up.

Core concepts

• circuitRF Reference Guide The Reference Guide contents, and the in-app Help anchor scheme.
• The Workspace The workspace window: documents, tool panels, docking, and the folder behind it all.
• Settings The Settings dialog, tab by tab: launch, permissions, colour theme and wirebond defaults.
• Units DBU, display units, the snap grid, and how to type a value with an SI prefix.
• Expressions Variables, cell parameters, functions and conditionals — one expression language.
• Grid & Connectivity The schematic grid, wires, and how connectivity is decided.
• Pins, Ports & Terms Pin, Port and Term: three different things with three different jobs.
• File Formats Every circuitRF document type and what is inside it.
• History Everything circuitRF has kept of a workspace: the states it kept for you, the versions you kept on purpose, and how to go back to any of them.

Design

• The Schematic Editor Drawing a circuit: the palette, placing and wiring, and setting up the analysis that runs it.
• Components Every component in the standard library: symbol, purpose and parameters.
• The Signal Designer The modulated signal a MOD_Source plays - LTE, NR, CW or your own I/Q file - with its spectrum, CCDF and EVM.
• Vias VIA and VIAGND: a via's L, R and C from the stackup, the formulas, and how they compare with a 3D solve.
• Importing a SPICE Model Importing a SPICE .model card or .subckt: what is carried, what is not, and why.
• Importing a schematic A schematic from another editor as a cell of its own: what becomes a native part, what stays a symbol, and the connectivity check.
• System Components The ideal blocks a system diagram is drawn out of, and where passive intermod comes from.
• Dynamic Symbols (SDD, ZPort, SnP) Components whose symbol changes with their parameters.
• Symbol Editor Drawing and editing a symbol.
• The SDD (Symbolically-Defined Device) The Symbolically-Defined Device: writing a nonlinear model as equations.
• The Nonlinear Capacitor & the C–V Editor C(V) as a Taylor series, and the C–V Editor that fits one.
• Compiled Verilog-A Models Running a compact model you supply, from Verilog-A source or a compiled artefact.
• The Match Component Direct synthesis of a bandpass matching network that absorbs both terminations.
• Using Plugins Tools other people write that circuitRF draws: opening one, allowing it, installing, updating and removing them.
• Writing a Plugin Writing a plugin: the manifest, the panel, every message, view and host call, in Python or a compiled language.
• RF Chain Budget A receive chain's budget stage by stage, an array included, and its transfer to test benches that check every number.

Simulate

• Simulations DC, S-parameters, harmonic balance, parametric sweeps, loadpull and pursuit.
• Measurements Post-processing a run into named quantities.
• The Netlist (.cnl) Format The .cnl elaborated-netlist format.
• The Data Display Plots, tables, trace cards and markers.
• Plot Types Rectangular, Smith, Polar and Table — and which data each will accept.
• Tuning Sliders on any value, with every Data Display following them as you drag.
• Sensitivity Which values move each goal, ranked at the design as it stands — S-parameter blocks included.
• Optimization Goals, variables and algorithms: letting circuitRF find values that meet the specification.
• Yield Tolerances, Monte Carlo, yield and corners: how many builds meet the specification.
• Derived Metrics Stability, passivity, group delay and the passive impedance readouts — with the equations.
• The WSProbe The WSProbe: nodal transfer functions for stability and in-situ design — with an appendix on stability itself.
• Results & Data Export Getting results out into Python, MATLAB or a Touchstone file.

Layout & EM

• The Layout Editor The layout view: technology, drawing, snapping, and the schematic it belongs to.
• Footprints SMT land patterns: case sizes, density levels, and how a part gets its artwork.
• Layout versus schematic Layout versus schematic: does the artwork implement the drawing, and what the report names.
• Create Schematic from Artwork A board's copper read as a schematic of native lines, vias and parts, reviewed first in a parts table.
• Create from Image A picture of a layout traced into a layout, or read as a schematic, checked on the picture itself.
• PCells Parameterised cells — placing one, driving it, and its parameter handles.
• PDK Integration Importing a kit and simulating the parts it supplies.
• PDK Authoring Authoring a kit: the OpenPDK layout, Python PCells, models and artwork.
• Model Library Format A model library's folder format: every key, what a reader must do, and an example.
• Protected Models Publishing a model whose inside stays private: compile it, what that still reveals, and signing the library.
• Using a gdsfactory kit Using a gdsfactory kit: layout cells, ports and a technology from an open kit's Python package.
• The Stackup The layers your board is made of - and which conductor is ground.
• Materials Where materials are kept - a technology's own list or a .cmat library it names - and entering one, thermal and anisotropic values included.
• The MoM Engine The planar method-of-moments solver: what it does, what it will not do, and how.
• EM Setup The EM Setup panel, control by control, and where the results land.
• EM Cells Simulating a schematic by EM of its own layout, at whatever values its variables have — and reusing it as a part.
• EM Solvers: MoM, FEM and FDTD MoM, FEM and FDTD: what each solver is, what it costs, and which to use for which problem.
• 3D EM 3D EM with Palace and openEMS: when to use it, getting the solvers, the 3D view, and a worked example.
• Installing Palace on Windows Installing Palace on Windows, step by step: what each step changes, what you will see, and how to undo it.
• The 3D Editor The 3D editor: drawing a cell in 3D — solids, placed cells, bond wires and ports — with no solver needed to draw.
• Thermal: temperature on the 3D model Temperature on the 3D model: heat sources, probes, contacts, Rth and Z_th, taught through two worked examples.
• Antennas Patch antennas: the pattern, the numbers that go with it, and the limits that bound both.

SAR and MRI

• SAR and B1 SAR and B1 from a 3D run: setting it up, units and normalisation, the B1 convention, reading the results.
• Co-simulation: B1, SAR and the radiation pattern from a schematic Parts as ports: B1, SAR and the radiation pattern from a schematic, tuned, optimized and toleranced with no new EM run.
• Tissues and phantoms Body tissues and tissue-simulating liquids with their sources, and the phantoms they fill.
• Voxel and mesh import Your own anatomy: a segmented label map or one closed surface per tissue, imported into a 3D view.
• Phone SAR A device against a phantom at its bands, and psSAR at its rated power beside published reference values.

Tools

• Smith Chart Narrowband matching by hand: one curve per component, a handle on every joint, and the load moving as you drag.
• S-Parameter Viewer A Touchstone file at a glance: what it states, its reflections on a Smith chart, and every term in dB and phase.
• harmonicaRF Interactive harmonic load-pull on one device, at the speed of a mouse drag.
• Model Composer A nonlinear FET model, or a passive one, built from measured or simulated data.
• Model Data The data a model is built from: what it needs, sampling another simulator, and every file format with an example.
• Writing a .cmodel The .cmodel file, field by field, and scripts that write one without the Model Composer.
• wBond Bondwire arrays: geometry, the 3D kernel, and S-parameters out.
• railRF Power integrity on the board you drew: DC drop, Z(f) against a target, and which decaps earn their place.

Command Line & Agents

• The Command Line Running every analysis headless: the verbs, their options and their exit codes.
• The MCP Server circuitRF as an MCP server: installing it, connecting a client, and the tools it offers.
• Designing with an AI agent Connecting an AI agent through MCP, what to tell it, and the design flow that works.

Application notes

• circuitRF Application Notes Worked investigations of questions that come up on real boards.
• AN-01 — Coupled Lines, EM Ports, terminations and de-embedding AN-01: how to EM-simulate coupled lines - kernel choice, where the ports go, and how two coupled feeds are calibrated together.
• AN-02 — Importing a Gerber file set, and turning it into a schematic AN-02: a Gerber file set imported, its stackup checked, and its copper read back as a schematic that simulates without an EM run.
• AN-03 — Extracting capacitance AN-03: when an electrostatic solve is the right way to get a capacitance, which metal is ground and which floats, the Maxwell matrix against the circuit one, and the answer in a schematic.
• AN-04 — A nonlinear FET model from a reference kit AN-04: a nonlinear FET model from another simulator's design kit - what to sample, at which plane, what each Model Composer step does with it, and how to check the model against the kit.