Designing PCells in Virtuoso

Hello,

I'm using IC5.0 Virtuoso to build PCells for MOS transistors. I would
like to draw several fingers using the "Repeat in X" functionality. I am
able to use the same the same functionality to put several contacts to
the gate according to the gate length.

When I try to add any other shape to the group to get several fingers
(e.g. the poly gate shape), I get the following error when compiling the
PCell:

*Error* fprintf: argument #1 should be an I/O port (type template =
"ptg") - nil

Can anybody tell me what's wrong? TIA

Paul

 

Paul,

Not really sure, but it might be something to do with the fact that pcell
evaluation does something clever to swallow errors and warnings produced by
the underlying pcell code. It redirects the output to a temporary file (if I
remember rightly) and it may be that it hasn't been able to open that
temporary file. Not sure where it puts it, but I'd hazard a guess at /tmp or
/var/tmp - perhaps one of these is full up on your machine?

BTW, I'd definitely recommend writing SKILL pcells rather than using the rather
limited graphical pcell interface. You can make them much more
flexible and they're easier to maintain. They'd also generally be quicker
to evaluate...

Regards,

Andrew.

 

I already considered that file creation problem as mentionned in a
related CCS Solution, but I couldn't find the reason. I guess I have to
learn writing SKILL...

Thanks for your help

Paul