Virtuosity: Spring-Cleaned Virtuoso Doc Closet

Spring is here and we just got done with our first round of the cleaning action at home over the weekend. Yes, it usually takes us a few weekends to get to the "it-looks-great" feeling! In the interim, we go through some cycles of stress, fatigue, arguments, pain, chaos—usually, lots of chaos, also some anticipation of peace—which is soberly hiding somewhere in a quiet corner. 

It certainly does take a braveheart to bring the house down, literally, and then put it back up. But, what it brings at the end of those two weeks is insurmountable energy and zest to live in that house again. 

But, to come to that point calls for a lot of work and change. There is often a lot of reorganization needed to make comfortable space for all the latest buys over the year. Sometimes, the accommodation of the new residents might call for the departure of our long-favored choices. If given a chance, I would argue my heart out to retain every single piece that I have ever called a favorite. But, that may not always be feasible, or practical.

Some of us who have been using the Cadence® Virtuoso® product suite for years might have our favorite commands too and would probably prefer running them just the same way they have for years. There's a level of trust and comfort that comes with such favorites, which might want us to hope they continue to be available to us in the same way. But, when you do need to adopt enhancements that are going to change and improve the way you have worked so far, some changes to the well-established methods are inevitable.

Virtuoso Documentation Refresh

When we decided to ship Virtuoso ICADVM18.1 without a few old favorites, we knew it was going to cause some raised eyebrows, possibly even break a few loyal hearts. But, our confidence in the new features exciting not only our new users but also ... our existing ones, is strong. Of course, this might call for a bit of unlearning and re-learning, and to help with that we have just spring-cleaned our Virtuoso documentation closet to make the transition easy for you. 

Not only is the Virtuoso documentation set replete with information on all the layout editing commands you have always favored, it also provides detailed information about the new applications and features that were recently introduced. Be it our already much-admired Virtuoso RF Solution, or our new and exciting capabilities like Design Intent, Concurrent Layout, Design Planner, Simulation Driven Routing, Legato Reliability Solution, Virtuoso Electromagnetic Solver Assistant, or more—our Virtuoso documentation set is well-equipped to support you in embracing our latest, cutting-edge offerings.

To keep the information relevant, we have removed any documentation that may no longer be of interest to you as the related products have now gone off-the-shelf, having past their end-of-life. We have also restructured some documentation. If you're looking at routing, you can now choose to view information specific to how you would like to route—automatically or manually. If you're looking for some schematic editing support, you can access all the relevant information now consolidated into a single user guide.

For more about what the refresh of the Virtuoso documentation set has resulted in, see the application note—Spring-Cleaned Virtuoso Documentation Closet—on Cadence Support portal. We're confident that you will love our spring-cleaned Virtuoso documentation closet, just the way I love my house after the annual clean-up! 

 - Rishu Misri Jaggi