circuitRF Reference Guide

The complete technical reference. Plain and direct — look things up here.

The Reference Guide is every chapter below. They are in one reading order, and every page carries Previous and Next links at its foot, so the whole guide can be read straight through as well as dipped into.

Core concepts

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.

Where to start

If you are new to circuitRF

Read Units and Grid & Connectivity first. Between them they cover the two conventions that are circuitRF's own rather than the industry's — how a coordinate is stored versus displayed, and what actually decides that two things are connected. Almost every early surprise is one of those two.

Eight chapters that are easy to miss

Seven of these are tools in their own right rather than components with a dialog, and one is a whole class of parts.

The Match Component synthesises a bandpass matching network that absorbs both terminations — closed-form, no optimiser, and broadband. The Smith Chart is its narrowband opposite: it synthesises nothing, and instead draws one curve per component so you can drag the network into place by hand. harmonicaRF runs harmonic load-pull on one device while you drag a marker. wBond models bondwire arrays as geometry rather than as a number you looked up. The Model Composer builds a nonlinear FET model from measured or simulated data, and places it in a schematic as a ComposedFET; Model Data is the data it reads, every format with an example. The Signal Designer defines the modulated signal an envelope run plays — LTE, NR, CW, or an I/Q file of your own — and shows its spectrum, CCDF and EVM first. And System Components covers the ideal blocks a system block diagram is drawn out of — circulator, coupler, hybrid, balun, switch, amplifier, attenuator, filter, duplexer and mixer — including where passive intermodulation comes from and what "ideal" costs you. The RF Chain Budget is a receive chain out of those blocks, as a table: the cascade in closed form, an array included, and one action that writes the test benches that check every number.