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Good software for Smith chart plotting

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TobiasWeissmann

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Hi,

I am currently doing a report about some stuff in RF design. Thus, I would need to make good quality plots from an s1p file. I am currently using Origin, but its Smith diagramm plotting feature is simply bad.

Could somebody advice me a good programm to do this task ?

Thanks a lot for your help,
Best regards,
Tobias Weissmann
 

Re: Good Smith chart plotter

Here is the program that I have used before. There is a free and a paid version. The free version worked well for what I needed, but I am not to what extent you will need it. Regardless, it is very intuitive and easy to use. I have included the link below.

**broken link removed**

I have used both versions. I believe the newer version runs on windows 7, but might be a little more buggy. The earlier version is rock solid (from my experience), but has a little less functionality.

Regards,
Willis
 
Re: Good Smith chart plotter

willissilliw said:
Here is the program that I have used before. There is a free and a paid version. The free version worked well for what I needed, but I am not to what extent you will need it. Regardless, it is very intuitive and easy to use. I have included the link below.

**broken link removed**
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot for your advice, but my .s1p file seems to be to big for this software (1000 pts), since it gives me messages about an "array error". Maybe its a bug of the free version, but the program didn't say it was a limitation of the free version.

Maybe I should try an other programm, but which one ?

Thanks a lot,
Best regards,
Tobias Weissmann
 

Re: Good Smith chart plotter

TobiasWeissmann said:
Thanks a lot for your advice, but my .s1p file seems to be to big for this software (1000 pts), since it gives me messages about an "array error". Maybe its a bug of the free version, but the program didn't say it was a limitation of the free version.

Maybe I should try an other programm, but which one ?

Thanks a lot,
Best regards,
Tobias Weissmann
Click to expand...

What operating system are you using? Also, did you try both versions of the software?

-Willis
 

Re: Good Smith chart plotter

I can think of an alternate way of doing it, but it would involve some work. Basically, as you may know, SVG format produces very high quality, and Inkscape is an excellent program for manipulating SVG files.
The XML SVG format is quite simple, you can see it if you open a blank file in inkscape, and draw a couple of lines and then save it.

So, if you could convert your vector points into XY co-ords (e.g. using a C program to process your text file, or Perl or whatever you're comfortable with), then you could paste
that into a .svg file XML content. There are already nice smith charts in SVG format, so it could be easily overlaid.

Admittedly it is a bit of work to write the C program, and to get the scaling right, but I suppose it would maybe be a days work.
 

Re: Good Smith chart plotter

willissilliw said:
What operating system are you using? Also, did you try both versions of the software?
Click to expand...

I just tried both versions :

- Version 2.03 works very well, but only for s2p files (2 ports) and not for s1p files (1 port). And it can't export graphs : just print them. The print quality is quite good, but I would involve much postprocessing for each graph.

- Version 3.10 plot completely messy plots for s2p files, and issue a "index out of bounds" message for s1p files.

I am on Windows 7 Professional, 64 bits.

I can think of an alternate way of doing it, but it would involve some work. Basically, as you may know, SVG format produces very high quality, and Inkscape is an excellent program for manipulating SVG files.
The XML SVG format is quite simple, you can see it if you open a blank file in inkscape, and draw a couple of lines and then save it.

So, if you could convert your vector points into XY co-ords (e.g. using a C program to process your text file, or Perl or whatever you're comfortable with), then you could paste
that into a .svg file XML content. There are already nice smith charts in SVG format, so it could be easily overlaid.

Admittedly it is a bit of work to write the C program, and to get the scaling right, but I suppose it would maybe be a days work.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the idea. Unfortunately, I have not enough time to do this.

By the way, I am using Latex : maybe someone has done an extension to plot s1p/s2p files in documents ?

Thanks a lot,
Best regards,
Tobias Weissmann
 

Re: Good Smith chart plotter

Would a simple, unlabeled Smith chart like this be enough?


This is the result viewer for the Sonnet Lite EM simulator. It can read and plot S-parameters from Touchstone files, with unlimited number of ports.
 

Re: Good Smith chart plotter

volker_muehlhaus said:
Would a simple, unlabeled Smith chart like this be enough?
Click to expand...

Yes, its more or less what I want.

Is it a screenshot or has this program an export function ? Additionnally, has this program a vector export function ?
 

Re: Good Smith chart plotter

TobiasWeissmann said:
Is it a screenshot or has this program an export function ? Additionnally, has this program a vector export function ?
Click to expand...

This was a screenshot.
You can export the bitmap in GIP or BMP format, but there is no vector drawing output.

As said, this is the result viewer of the Sonnet Lite EM simulator. To start the result viewer, click on "View Response" in the Sonnet Lite taskbar, and then load your S-parameter file(s). The plot type can be changed from rectangular to Smith chart with Graph > Type > Smith Chart.

Download:
https://www.sonnetsoftware.com/products/lite/download.html
 

Re: Good Smith chart plotter

If you need vector format, there is also this (Mirosoft Excel smith chart with import facility) here (I've not tried it).
But, although it is vector format, I think you could only copy/paste it into Mirosoft products like Word or Powerpoint. But I'm no expert.
It has import capability. It also mentions a visio format I think.
Anyway, as mentioned if you truly want an open vector format then SVG is the way to go (google for Smith_chart_bmd.svg to download it, the web page is in a foreign language but the smith chart isn't) and write a converter to overlay your S-param points - but that will take some time : (
 

Hey,

Sorry for my late answer. I finally got my plots by struggling with Origin, like the previous plots I've done.

For the next report, I will try pgfplots and some coding in Latex.

Thanks you all for your suggestions,
Kind regards,
Tobias Weissmann
 

Try RF Office from www.wave-dimension.com
full_smith3.jpg
 

Hey,

Thanks you for your answer. I don't use smith diagrams currently, but I'm still interested.

Your software seems interesting, but I dislike the idea of paying each month for a piece of software.

Kind regards,
Tobias Weissman
 

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