@fil is above /.xschemsimulations/ in the error message or is there a missing slash? by default the path should be

/home/username/.xschem/simulations/test_mim_cap.spice

Did you install open_pdks? Now the right way to use sky130 and xschem is to install the spice models via open_pdks, as explained in this . Consider that you don't need anymore to manually clone the skywater-pdk repository, it will be pulled in automatically by open_pdks, just give it the

--enable-sky130-pdk

option when running configure:

./configure --enable-sky130-pdk --prefix=/pdk/root/dir

in above line /pdk/root/dir must be replaced by you to the place on the system where you want to install the pdk. If you don't give a --prefix it will be installed in /usr/local. A good choice for a single user setup is to add

--prefix=/home/username

. After installing open_pdks (which requires magic and xschem as prerequisites) create an empty directory, copy the file /pdk/root/dir/share/pdk/sky130A/libs.tech/xschem/xschemrc into this directory and start xschem from there. Things to check in the xschem tcl prompt after starting xschem: 1. `puts $netlist_dir`; check this directory exists and is read/writeable. 2. `puts $XSCHEM_LIBRARY_PATH`; Do all the directories listed exist on the system? 3. `puts $SKYWATER_MODELS`: is this path correct? inside this path there must be the top

sky130.lib.spice

file.

thank you for replying. this is the indeed the youtube video that I followed. regarding the slash, it was a typo in the comment (copy/paste is finnicky in WSL) and I edited my original question. 1.

puts $netlist_dir

returns /home/username/.xschem/simulations, which has read/write/execute permission 2.

puts $XSCHEM_LIBRARY_PATH

has a few directories, all of which exist: ~/.xschem/xschem_library, ~/share/pdk/sky130A/libs.tech/xschem, and ~/example_xschem_sky130 (the last one is the directory I made and copied the xschemrc into from the open_pdks install) 3.

puts $SKYWATER_MODELS

seems correct. when I navigate to that folder there is a file called

sky130.lib.spice

which I included to test ngspice

Ok, no problem, just ping me again if you see the problem appearing again, i will investigate. Thank you for doing the checklist.

@Stefan Schippers one step forward, two steps back, I'm afraid. I had to reinstall WSL, and after following the video a second time, I get warnings like: "symbol not found: $PDK_ROOT/sky130B/libs.tech/xschem/sky130_tests/devices/title.sym." when I navigate to those directories, it's true, the symbols do not exist. did I somehow mess up the open_pdks installation? I could try rebuilding the PDK I suppose.

@fil if after open_pdks install the xschem libs are not present you need to investigate the open_pdks build and install process. May be @Tim Edwards can comment or suggest some log files to check. What was missing? the whole

libs.tech/xschem

tree? or only

libs.tech/xschem/sky130_tests/devices

?

only the devices directory, it seems. this could be related, but I get some really strange ngspice syntax errors inside of the pdk models, but only with certain devices and parameters (ngspice 3.7)