Virtuosity: Exploring Histories

OK we heard you, you want to be able to specify Virtuoso®ADE Explorer history names before simulation and you want these histories to increment just like they do in Virtuoso®ADE Assembler, right? Let's look at how to do this.

ADE Explorer was designed to be an exploratory tool to allow you to run a single test over sweeps and corners, and by default the results would be overwritten with each run, unless you chose to save them off with another name.

It turned out that many users wanted ADE Explorer to work a bit more like ADE Assembler and automatically save histories without overwriting the existing ones. We have added a couple of environment variables to allow you greater control over this.

By default ADE Explorer saves a history 'ExplorerRun.0' which is overwritten by each new run, unless these results are saved with a new name using the Save Results form that appears when you choose Results->Save.

The following variable has been added to allow you to control these ADE Explorer history names.

envSetVal("maestro.explorer" "onHistoryNameCollision“ ‘cyclic “Overwrite”)

• Overwrite is the default and is what you've been used to so far with ADE Explorer, the ExplorerRun.0 history is overwritten with each new run.
• Error will error out if a new simulation is run and the history name is the same. This is useful if you don't want to accidently overwrite your history.
• IncrementAsNew will increment the history names, ExplorerRun.0, ExplorerRun.1, ExplorerRun.2 and so on. You will have to set this value as your default if this is the behavior you want.

And, no you cannot run multiple simulations simultaneously in Explorer, that's what Assembler is for.

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That's great, but how do I change the default history name?

You can do it by setting the following variable: 

envSetVal("adexl.historyNamePrefix" "showNameHistoryForm" 'boolean t)

This will pop up a form that allows you to change the history name and add some notes.

When I run the simulation now, my history is saved as ExplorerTypicalSweeps.0 and available in the Select History to View Results form that appears when you choose Results->Select. But, if we use this in conjunction with the variable below:

envSetVal("maestro.explorer" "onHistoryNameCollision“ ‘cyclic “IncrementAsNew”)

Then I still get the pop up but if I leave the name as it was, then the next run will be saved as ExplorerTypicalSweeps.1 and so on, and will be available from the Results->Select form like this:

If I go up to ADE Assembler I can see these ADE Explorer histories there too:

Related Resources

• User Guide
  • Virtuoso ADE Explorer User Guide
• Rapid Adoption Kit
  • Saving Incremental Histories in Explorer

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Arja