Things You Didn't Know About Virtuoso: Which Way Should I "Go"?

Just a short post this week, as I've been quite busy recording videos for some of our Virtuoso Platform Webinar Series, the last of which, covering Spec-Driven Design, airs Tues. June 30.

Recordings of this and past webinars can be found here. (If not posted there yet, they will be available soon).  They've called these the 300-series webinars, a college course numbering analogy to let you know that you'll be getting a bit more technical depth and fewer colorful marketing slides...

You may have found, in experimenting with some of the new Virtuoso assistants (like the Navigator or the Property Editor Assistant) or toolbars (like the Bookmarks or Workspaces toolbars) that you've seen a menu entry for something called "Go".  Hmmm..."Go" where?  I'd like to go to the Bahamas, how about you?  Well, unfortunately, this is not that kind of "Go" (it's also not an ancient Chinese board game that I really suck at).

Take a look up in the upper left corner of your web browser.  See those arrows?  Yep, it's that kind of "Go". 

To display the Go toolbar, click RMB in the area just above the schematic canvas and select "Go".  By default, it appears as a 2nd row toolbar, but you can move it around just like any other toolbar--by clicking the left mouse button on the triple-vertical-bar drag handle at one end of the toolbar and dragging it to any edge of the window. 

It might not do much at first, in fact all the icons will be grayed-out until you start navigating around your design.  Once you open a different cellview or descend into a sub-block, the arrows on the Go toolbar work just like the arrows at the top of your web browser.  You can use the left and right arrows to move back and forward through the cellviews you have displayed.  The red arrow to the right of the back and forward buttons allow you to jump forward or back to any of these cellviews right away.  Again, just like your web browser.

But wait, you say, my web browser doesn't have any up arrows.  What's up with that?  (No pun intended--well, maybe a little..).  As you've probably guessed, since Virtuoso operates on data which is intrinsically hierarchical, we've added the up arrows to intuitively take you back up your design hierarchy after you've descended.  The up arrow with the little bar over it takes you immediately to the top of the design.

Well, that's all for now.  Next up--another way to view the world...and extra bonus tips.

Stacy Whiteman