Virtuosity: Introducing the Pin Tool

Overview

Going out for dinner? You really wouldn’t want to buy the appetizer from one restaurant, the main course from another, and the dessert from a third one. It’s great to have everything under one roof.

So, wouldn’t it be great to have a unified interface for all pin-related tasks in Virtuoso? 

Virtuoso Floorplanner now includes the Pin Tool – a one stop shop for all your pin-related tasks. The Pin Tool follows an object-based approach to working with pins by consolidating and redefining the tasks under one umbrella. The tool includes several new options that let you perform a wide range of pin-related tasks.

The Pin Tool Interface

You can access the Pin Tool either from the Floorplan menu or from the Floorplanning toolbar. All pin-related tasks are grouped in a logical design flow in the various menus in the Pin Tool. You can use these commands to create pins from labels or net shapes, plan and optimize pins, custom resize pins, and switch between the various browsers – Pin Browser, Label Browser, and Net Shapes Browser. You can also perform tasks such as promoting and merging pins and creating rails (with conflict detection and avoidance capability).

By default, you see the Pin Browser, which lets you view and edit all the top-level and level-1 pins in the current layout design. Use the commands in the View menu to switch to the Label Browser or Net Browser.

These browsers support:

• In-situ editing, which means that you can edit the attributes directly in the browser
• Cross-selection and cross-highlighting of entries in the browser and the canvas
• Sorting and filtering the entries in the list as per your preferences
• Creating pins for the labels and nets that are selected in the browsers
• Using shortcut menu options to edit and reorganize objects in the list

And that’s not all –  watch out for the new options we plan to add to the Pin Tool in the upcoming releases! 

Does that sound interesting? We’re sure that after exploring the plethora of features it has on offer, you won't look further, and head straight to the Pin Tool.

Related Resources

Virtuoso Foorplanner User Guide - Using the Pin Tool

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!

Priya