Virtuosity: New Flexible Subwindows

Plots in Cadence® Virtuoso® Visualization and Analysis can be plotted in a window or subwindow.  Subwindows allow you to see plots from different analyses side by side. Until IC6.1.8/ICADVM18.1, the subwindows were not very flexible. Now, we've improved these so that you can choose any grid layout of subwindows up to a 6 x 8 grid. In addition, you can resize the subwindows easily and move them around. These subwindow configurations are also stored as part of the Maestro Plotting Templates, which will be discussed in detail in an upcoming blog.

Let's see this in action in the short video below. Here you can see a custom grid of 3 x 3, then signals being plotted, dragged around, subwindows resized and swapped.  

By default, the subwindows will plot rectangular graphs. If you want to change the type of graph the subwindow should display, you can still choose from the drop-down in the Results Browser, or even easier, just hover the pointer over the subwindow and choose the graph type from Rectangular, Polar, Admittance, or Impedance. 

Resizing Subwindows

When you hover the pointer over a subwindow, you'll notice the blue and gray drag handles.  These indicate the direction in which the subwindows can be resized. They can only be resized if there are empty subwindows next to where you are trying to expand the current subwindow into. The blue drag handles indicate the direction in which the subwindow can be expanded, and the gray drag handles mean that it cannot be expanded. There's also a handy yellow border showing where the subwindow will expand to.

Subwindow Layout Modes

The ADE Waveform Window has had layout modes for some time, but now any custom layout you create can be restored. In the short video below, card mode is selected first, which means the selected subwindow will be the focus. The subwindow drop-down in the toolbar allows you to choose the other subwindows that should be the focus. The Horizontal and Vertical layouts help to organize the subwindows horizontally and vertically. Selecting Auto organizes the subwindows uniformly, and the Restore custom layout will bring back the custom layout you created.

Naming Subwindows

If you want to add names to your subwindows then the following commands will be useful.

If your plot has only one graph subwindow, you can enter the following SKILL command in the CIW:

awvDisplaySubwindowTitle( awvGetCurrentWindow() "My New Title" )

If you have multiple graph subwindows you can add the subwindow option to specify which subwindow title to change. Just enter the following command in the CIW:

awvDisplaySubwindowTitle( awvGetCurrentWindow() "TRAN PLOT" ?subwindow 8)

The subwindow number is the number of the subwindow shown in the top right corner.

Related Resources

• Rapid Adoption Kit
  • Virtuoso Visualization and Analysis XL (Updated for IC6.1.8)
  • ADE Plotting Templates
• Videos
  • ViVA XL - New Subwindow Layout
  • ViVA XL - Plotting Templates
• User Guide
  • Virtuoso Visualization and Analysis XL User Guide

For more information on Cadence circuit design products and services, visit www.cadence.com.

About Virtuosity

Virtuosity has been our most viewed and admired blog series for a long time that has brought to fore some lesser known, yet very useful software and documentation improvements, and also shed light on some exciting new offerings in Virtuoso. We are now expanding the scope of this series by broadcasting the voice of different bloggers and experts, who would continue to preserve the legacy of Virtuosity, and try to give new dimensions to it by covering topics across the length and breadth of Virtuoso, and a lot more… Click Subscribe to visit the Subscription box at the top of the page in which you can submit your email address to receive notifications about our latest Virtuosity posts. Happy Reading!

Arja Hunkin