# LTSpice - PGF/TikZ

I am a newcomer to LaTeX and came across PGF/TikZ by chance. Currently I try to draw the function graphs f(x) in PGF/TikZ, but with no success. Can anyone help me to read the data file from LTSpice with PGF/TikZ and draw them afterwards?

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{pgfplotstable}

\begin{document}
\pgfplotstabletypesetfile{LM317.txt}
\end{document}


Error-Message: ! Text line contains an invalid character. t^^@ i^^@m^^@e^^@ ^^@V^^@(^^@n^^@0^^@0^^@5^^@)^^@ ^^@V^^@(^^@n^^@0^^... l.29 \pgfplotstabletypesetfile{LM317.txt} ^^M

Data as text (UTF-8)

time                   V(n005)       V(n001)        V(n003)
0.000000000000000e+00  0.000000e+00  0.000000e+00   0.000000e+00
1.031821995489313e-99  1.994824e-06  1.102979e-18   9.197703e-25
1.105501326095841e-09  2.155836e-06  5.366109e-19   -1.368576e-24
1.252859987308896e-09  2.527454e-06  -7.874506e-18  -1.056591e-23
1.547577309735008e-09  3.496970e-06  -2.185391e-17  -2.762964e-23
2.137011954587231e-09  6.286433e-06  -3.816860e-17  -4.617686e-23
3.022983821851659e-09  1.217947e-05  -3.697916e-17  -3.764493e-23
3.877261642553005e-99  1.941849e-05  -5.500619e-18  2.255405e-23
5.199523428066601e-09  3.129201e-05   2.971325e-17  1.256328e-22
6.574180098003653e-09  4.121817e-05  -1.604368e-17  1.082905e-22
8.179971204820860e-09  4.819972e-05  -4.373686e-17  2.275496e-23
1.010285679622539e-08  5.403126e-05  2.425893e-17   -3.358998e-23
1.189592599779081e-08  6.256012e-05  7.426873e-18   -2.161916e-22
1.379091751168107e-08  7.659331e-05  -3.980423e-17  -5.083033e-22

• What is LTSpice? – AndréC Jan 12 at 6:52
• Welcome to TeX.SX! Please help us help you and add a minimal working example (MWE) that illustrates your problem. Reproducing the problem and finding out what the issue is will be much easier when we see compilable code, starting with \documentclass{...} and ending with \end{document}. – Stefan Pinnow Jan 12 at 6:55
• I don't know that LTSpice is, but you can use \draw plot[] (); to draw plots. For example, \draw plot[smooth,domain=-1:1] (\x,(\x)^2); gives you the plot of f(x)=x^2. – JouleV Jan 12 at 7:18
• LTSpice is used for the simulation of electrical circuits. In this software it is possible to export the measuring points into a *.txt file. My approach would have been to call this file in LaTeX and draw the function graphs myself using PGF/TikZ. – user179354 Jan 12 at 8:30
• \documentclass{article} \usepackage{pgfplots} \usepackage{array} \usepackage{booktabs} \usepackage{pgfplotstable} \begin{document} \pgfplotstabletypesetfile{LM317.txt} \end{document} Message: ! Text line contains an invalid character. <read 1> t^^@ i^^@m^^@e^^@ ^^@V^^@(^^@n^^@0^^@0^^@5^^@)^^@ ^^@V^^@(^^@n^^@0^^... l.29 \pgfplotstabletypesetfile{LM317.txt} – user179354 Jan 12 at 8:35

the ^^@ mean that your txt file is in UTF-16 which isn't the easiest format to handle. use your editor to resave the file in UTF-8

With the posted data, saved as UTF-16, you get

! Text line contains an invalid character.

the ^^@ are always an indication of UTF-16, as @ is character 32 so control-@, ^^@ is character 0 so the log is showing that you have a null byte between every character, which is exactly the encoding UTF-16 for characters in the ASCII range.