Home > Community > Forums > Custom IC Design > How to display a p-cell's constituent layers in a layout (Layout XL, Virtuoso IC6.1.1)

Email
* Required Fields

Recipients email * (separate multiple addresses with commas)

Your name *

Your email *

Message *

Contact Us

Cadence Contacts

Global Office Locator
Find Offices worldwide »

Sales Inquiry
Request for Product information »
Cadence Channel Partners »

Corporate Headquarters
Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
2655 Seely Avenue
San Jose, CA 95134
Phone: 408.943.1234
* Required Fields
First Name *

Last Name *

Email *

Company / Institution *

Comments: *

 How to display a p-cell's constituent layers in a layout (Layout XL, Virtuoso IC6.1.1) 

Last post Thu, Feb 26 2009 8:38 AM by skillUser. 3 replies.
Started by Unicode787Plus 25 Feb 2009 07:58 PM. Topic has 3 replies.
Page 1 of 1 (4 items)
Sort Posts:

  • Wed, Feb 25 2009 7:58 PM

    How to display a p-cell's constituent layers in a layout (Layout XL, Virtuoso IC6.1.1) Reply

    In previous versions of Cadence Virtuoso, hitting the Shift+F key combination in Layout XL allowed me to display p-cells as sub-layouts with their constituent individual layers (that way I could easily find their pins and wire them to the rest of the layout), while hitting Ctrl+F would revert back to the default view where p-cells were displayed as simple, labeled red "blackboxes". Now my school is using Virtuoso IC6.1.1, and the key combinations I mentioned above no longer work, and I can't find a menu command that can let me display p-cells as sub-layouts instead of red boxes.
    Filed under: , , ,
    • Post Points: 20

  • Wed, Feb 25 2009 9:32 PM

    • skillUser
    • Top 10 Contributor
    • Joined on Fri, Sep 19 2008
    • Austin, TX
    • Posts 2,424
    • Points 13,160
    Re: How to display a p-cell's constituent layers in a layout (Layout XL, Virtuoso IC6.1.1) Reply

    Hi,

    You should be able to do a few things here:

    hiGetCurrentWindow()->stopLevel = 0 ;; displays level '0' data only, not contents of cells
    hiGetCurrentWindow()->stopLevel = 32 ;; displays all levels, down to 32 levels of hierarchy deep

     Or, look at CIW -> Options -> Bindkey, select Layout, enter "F" in the "Key or Mouse Binding" field and move off the form so that it updates - look to see what (if anything) the 'F' (Shift-F) bindkey is set to. Alternatively, press "Show Bind Keys" and view the Layout bindkeys in the text window.

    Load the default bindkeys yourself:

    load(prependInstallPath("samples/local/leBindKeys.il")) ;; load the default layout bindkeys

    Finally, use the layout window's Options -> Display menu and modify the Display Levels: Stop Level number (e.g. set to 0 to view only top level data, 1 to view one level down in the hierarchy, etc.)

    Regards,

    Lawrence.

    • Post Points: 20

  • Wed, Feb 25 2009 10:34 PM

    Re: How to display a p-cell's constituent layers in a layout (Layout XL, Virtuoso IC6.1.1) Reply

    Setting Stop Level # to 1 or more causes my instance of Virtuoso to crash with a segmentation fault. Attached is a copy of my CDS.log file at the moment Virtuoso crashed. I believe it is a problem with the PDK I use in my school (NCSU's FreePDK45).

    CDS.log.txt
    • Post Points: 20

  • Thu, Feb 26 2009 8:38 AM

    • skillUser
    • Top 10 Contributor
    • Joined on Fri, Sep 19 2008
    • Austin, TX
    • Posts 2,424
    • Points 13,160
    Re: How to display a p-cell's constituent layers in a layout (Layout XL, Virtuoso IC6.1.1) Reply

     Oh dear.

    I searched for 

    "*WARNING* dbStartGenViaHeader"

    in our internal databases and this message crops up a few times.  It looks like it may have been fixed in a more recent release of IC611 than you are using (your log file shows IC6.1.1.500.12) - the most recent ISR is 6.1.1.500.61

    The problem is related to PCells, but I could not find a clear description of the exact problem, nor which subversion it is fixed in. However, I recommend updating to the latest ISR of IC611 if you can.

    Regards,

    Lawrence.

     
    • Post Points: 5
Page 1 of 1 (4 items)
Sort Posts:
Started by Unicode787Plus at 25 Feb 2009 07:58 PM. Topic has 3 replies.