Force analog design environment to use one stimulus file

Hi,

I have written a stimulus file which works nicely under the ADE and
spectre. It seems though that AE copies the file to a folder called
netlist/stimulus and stops using the original specified under the path
provided in setup->Simulation files. How can I force the ADE to not
copy my stim file and use the original.

Regards

Mathias

 

Why do you want to do that?

Bernd

 

If I change the stimulus file I want the changes to appear in the ADE
I have tried modifying the copy which the AED makes when netlisting
but on a few occasions the file simply got deleted and I lost all my
modifications. Finally, if I tell the ADE to use the stimulus file in a
specific location it shouldn't go and make a copy, use the copy instead
and ignore changes made in the original stimulus file.

Regards
Mathias

 

Well, basically you are right about that, and I gave up using the Stimulus
generator interface and the Stimulus include entry in the setup and instead
write my stimulus in an ordinary ascii file and include it in the model
dialog in the setup menu. This way I can utilize the sections features to
easily switch between sets of stimulus. It is also easy to define a lot of
stimulus files which can be enabled and disabled from the dialog and there
is also an "edit file" button which make it fairly easy to keep the number
of windows open at a time low. Downside is that you miss the horrible, slow
useless, Stimulus Setup generator Dialog. Upside is that a modification of
your stimulus file can be done in your favourite text editor and you can
put comments in there what you are doing. I never look back.

 

I pretty certain that you can not change this behaviour, because the
simulator runs on the stuff it finds in the netlist directory not on
you local files.

But nevertheless if you modify you stimulus input file the old
copy in the netlist directory should be updated, don't know why this
does not happen.

Have you tried to use 'Netlist->Recreate' after you modified your
stimulus not just hit the 'netlist & run' button.
'netlist & run' only does an incremental netlisting, maybe
your stimulus file was not taken into account then, just an assumption.

Bernd

 

Hi Svenn,

thank you very much for your extensive reply. Exactly what I needed (I
will not miss
the Stimulus Setup Dialog though ;-)

Regards
Mathias

 

Hi Bernd,

thanx for the reply. You are right it works when I recreate the netlist
(didn't know about the incremental netlisting). Thank you for your
help.

Regards,

Mathias

 

There's a very good reason why it copies the stimulus file. It actually doesn't
do a straight copy, but does an expansion of OSS references - this means
you can put things like [#/I1/I2/net1] (I think that's the syntax) in the
stimulus file, using a schematic hierarchical name, and it will replace it with
the equivalent netlist name - so if any mapping is done, it will correctly map
to the name that ended up in the netlist.

This mapping used to be far more important in the days of flat netlisters, but
still can be an issue due to some of the mapping that goes on in the netlister.

If you don't want the mapping, or copying, use the Model Library mechanism as
has been suggested in earlier replies.

Andrew.