uwezi/circuitikz_import

Import scripts for circuittikz

circuitikz_import

Import scripts for circuitikz

The package circuitikz allows the rendering of high quality schematic drawings in LaTeX. However, it is not an easy task to program a circuit rather than simply drawing it.

I was planning to do some animations in Manim, the animation tool created by Grant Sanderson from 3Blue1Brown on youtube for the upcoming teaching semester and decided to see if I could write a python script to import schematic drawings from LTspice into the circuitikz format.

LTspice is a free circuit simulator which stores its schematics into text files. So parsing such a file using a script should be doable - and it was.

But why stop there. Now that I had a clear concept, I wrote a second script for importing schematic diagrams from [KiCAD](https://www.kicad.org/. KiCAD is a free open-source program to draw schematic diagrams and design printed circuit boards based on these schematics.

The scripts are by no means complete. Both scripts allow for the conversion of simple schematic diagrams from either LTspice or KiCAD into the circuitikz format, supporting basic circuit elements such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, voltage and current sources, diodes and some transistor types. However they should be sufficient to create a scaffold in circuitikz to build on, and of course the scripts can be extended to other components as well.

Uppsala, 2022-08-05