Batch of SKILL trainee questions (basic stuff)

Hi all,

I have a list of basic SKILL question, i hope that you can put some
answers to them.

Q1. I don't have Netscape, but only firefox, is it possible to display
cdsdocs contents in firefox? How can i do it?

Q2. When I type "openbook" anything in terminal, it gives me "command
not found", what should i do to see it?

Q3. Where to read about bindkeys setting, modification and
particularly bindkeys "events"?

Q4. Is there a meaning for every built-in Skill functions suffixes?
Like hi..., ge... dmb... and so on?? Where can i find explanation or
comments about them?

Q5. I want to pass certain string to a function like hiSetWindowName,
and that string needs to have a variable value to be substituted when
calling the function, in Tcl we can put the string between double-
quotation pairs and put the variable as $var, is there a way to do
similar thing in Skill??

Q6. I need to read dedicated example(s) about circuit building
(instance placing, wiring the circuit, and biasing it) in Skill, this
is dedicated to create an automated flow for some devices test. Where
to find that?

Q7. Why don't i see the menu when creating it using hiCreateSimpleMenu
in the CIW? Should i use also any function to initialize CIW menus?

Q8. When I create a menu in certain window banner, is there a way to
place the menu to right of the window (like the help menu)?

Q9. Finally,How to know information about cadence stuff like menu
names (e.g. file, edit, ...) , window names, and so on?

Thank you very much in advance,
And best regards,
Ahmad

 

For Q1. I found the answer, the solution was quite easy, just by
making a symbolic link to firefox in /usr/bin and rename it to
netscape.

For Q2. I find in my $CDSHOME folder and subfolders for "openbook" and
nothing was found except here: $CDSHOME/share/java/COM/cadence/
openbook but i couldn't find anything useful there (I am using Linux
RHEL 4 btw)

For Q3. I could find information about it under: Cadence User
Interface SKILL Functions Reference

 

Try setting the environment variable CDS_DEFAULT_BROWSER to firefox. I
think cdsdoc pays attention to that

Try cdsdoc instead of openbook.

Sample bindkeys files are in <CDShier>/tools/dfII/samples/local.
Also, cdsdoc has a lot of stuff on that. And the documentation is also
available through sourcelink, as far as I know.

Yes. hi == Human Interface. ge == Graphics Editor. I forget what dmb is.
le == Layout Editor. etc.

Lets says the variable name is StringVar. You can do:

MyWindowName = strcat( "prefix " StringVar " postfix" )

or

MyWindowName = sprintf( nil "prefix %s postfix" StringVar )

for example.

That I don't know (I'm a GUI person).

CIW menus should be initialized with the ciw.menus file. hiCreateSimpleMenu()
just creates the menu, you have to use hiAddBannerMenu() to add it to a
window, but you really want to set up the ciw.menus files, since that tends
to override what's place programmatically. The menus files are all in

Partly experience, partly documentation, partly looking at the log file...

-Pete Zakel
()

"we will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love,
we will cry over things we used to laugh &
our new wisdom will bring tears to eyes of gentile
creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then &
in the end a summer with wild winds &
new friends will be."

 

Hi Guys,

Q1 :
.. linking netscape to mozilla in /usr/bin is a possible solution but
requires writing privileges.
.. As far as I know, CDS_DEFAULT_BROWSER is available for CDSDOC 2.2
version which comes with ICOA5.2.51. It does not work for CDSDOC 2.1
and back. i.e it is not supported for IC5141. Check your CDSDOC
version to ensure this is applicable in your case : cdsdoc -version.
There are other possible solutions but there is no point in arguing
since you've made it working ;-)

Q2:
To be honest, the only times I used openbook/cdsdoc are when the
people I used to support complain it's not working.
I have copied/linked the cds pdfs into my laptop's hard disc myslef.
I've made it with a unix command like this :
unix> find $CDSHOME/doc -iname '*.pdf' -exec cp {} /home/kaced/doc/
cadence \;
It's not perfect I know ...

Q3:
The following skill functions may help : hiGetBindKeys,
hiGetBindKeys ... Or CIW -> Options -> Bindkey...

Q4:
add Plotting
addpa Floorplanning
adf Floorplanning
adfp Floorplanning
adp Floorplanning
aed Analog Editing
ael Analog Expression Language
alm Analog Library Management
app Application
asi Analog Simulation
awv Analog Waveform
ccp Copy Engine
cdf Component Descrption Format
ciw Component Interpreter Window
cor Corner
dag Display Acyclic Graphing
data Data
db Database
dd Design Data
dds Design Data Services
de Design Editing
df Design Flow
dl Display Listing
dm Design Managing
dmb Design Management Browsing
dr Display resourcing
eco Engineering Change Ordering
enter Enterfunction
env Environment
fm Documenting
gdm Generic Design Management
ge Graphics Editing
gr Floorplanning
hi Human Intefacing
ic Floorplanning
icc routing
ipc Inter Process Communication
ise Interactive Simulation Environment
iv Interactive Verification
las Layout Synthesizing
lc Library Converting
le Layout Editing
list Listing
lx Layout Editing (XL)
mc Place & Route
menu Menu
mif Documenting
ocn Ocean
pc Parametrized Cells
post Plotting
pr Floorplanning
pra Floorplanning
prn Floorplanning
probe Probing
pwr Floorplanning
rod Relative Object Designing
sc Structure Compiling
sch Schematic
sim Simulation
sk Skill Linting
sy Symbolic compacting
tc Technology
tech Technology
user User
window Window
...... Oooouuuuuuffff

Q5 :
I use sprintf() more often since it offers the formating features.
strcat does concatenates strings only.
Please note that unlike strcat, sprintf assigns the resultant string
to the variable given as the first argument. So instead writing :
MyWindowName = sprintf( nil "prefix %s postfix" StringVar ), which
works very fine actually, you can make it :
sprintf(MyWindowName "prefix %s postfix" StringVar ). This syntax form
is very handy for lazy people like me

Q6:
I don't know if there is something about it in the CDS samples but I
used to have some examples in my personnal box but I'm not finding
them just now.Let me some time to chase it up ...

Q7/Q8: Nothing to add.

Q9: There is no magic answer for this I'm afraid.I'm might be wrong.
I know some of them by experience as well :
The LibraryManager "file" menu is for example known as "fileCascade"
in the skill world. Type in listFunctions("fileCascade") into your
CIW, this will come with the file menu items ... It's very long to
talk about all the menus but don't hesitate to ask if you're looking
for a specific one.

Q10 : This is a Joker one.
Try using listFunctions()/printFunctions() and startFinder(). These
are really useful ...

At the end, The Skill training is excellent, it's worth asking your
boss for it ...

Enjoy !

Riad.

 

Wow! Perfect guys!! That's much more better that i can see in my
dreams

Thanks a lot!

We've already got the orange training book from Cadence, but for the
time being i don't have enough time before starting my first SKILL
project in PDKs that will last for 4 months :-(

They plan to push me to an advanced SKILL course after that, unless
you guys made me expert

Riad, how're you, i would like to say thanks particularly to you ;-)

I would appreciate if you can come up with the circuit building and
simulation examples asap.

Best regards,
Ahmad

 

Wow! Perfect guys!! That's much more better that i can see in my
dreams

Thanks a lot!

We've already got the orange training book from Cadence, but for the
time being i don't have enough time before starting my first SKILL
project in PDKs that will last for 4 months :-(

They plan to push me to an advanced SKILL course after that, unless
you guys made me expert

Riad, how're you, i would like to say thanks particularly to you ;-)

I would appreciate if you can come up with the circuit building and
simulation examples asap.

Best regards,
Ahmad

 

Little mistake in my last post :
listFunctions("fileCascade") is rubbish, fileCascade is not a
function.
It's actually lmgrQueryNamedObjects("fileCascade"), your libManager
should be open of course.

Sorry for that !

 

Q3. Where to read about bindkeys setting, modification and

There a nice but short tutorial in this wiki : http://cadence.wikispaces.com/Bindkeys
The wiki was initiated by users of this newsgroup, but unfortunately didn't evolve too much.

Yes. I have a list of prefixes in my SQR (according to which, dmb stands for design management
browsing), but I don't know if there's a list somewhere in the regular documentation.

Example:

ciwMenuInit() ;; call this to make sure the ciw menus have been initialized, or they might be reset
later on

hiInsertBannerMenu(
hiGetCIWindow()
hiCreatePulldownMenu(
'ciwCustomMenu
"Custom Menu"
list(
hiCreateMenuItem(
?name 'ciwCustomMenuItem
?itemText "Custom Menu Item"
?callback " myCallback()"
)
)
""
)
(hiGetNumMenus(hiGetCIWindow())-1)
)

I don't think so.

Use hiGetCurrentWindow(), hiGetWindowMenu(), hiGetMenuItems() type of functions, for example.



Stéphane

 

Stéphane,

Thanks for the link to the cadence wiki, I didn't know abou it
actually !
Since I spare quite a bit of time to type in the common abreviations
into this item, I thought it worth duplicating it into the wiki you
mentionned.

http://cadence.wikispaces.com/Skill+functions+common+abreviations

Riad.

 

Thanks,

I have tried hiGetWindowMenu(window(1)) for example, and it always
returns nil, did i make a mistake?

Guys, please advice regarding circuit building with SKILL or OCEAN.

Thanks and regards,
Ahmad

 

"Window Menu" is the RMB popup (or MMB on older releases) on a graphics
window (and some other windows), and the CIW doesn't have one of those.
The banner menus are gotten with hiGetBannerMenus().

-Pete Zakel
()

"Probably the best operating system in the world is the [operating system]
made for the PDP-11 by Bell Laboratories." - Ted Nelson, October 1977