What's Good About AMS Partial Design Simulation? It’s in the 16.5 Release!

Partial Design Simulation aims at unifying the PCB and simulation flow by enabling the designer to use a single schematic for both simulation and PCB implementation. This gives the designer the ability to work with a larger design that may contain portions that will never be simulated in Allegro AMS Simulator, and also allows different circuits (in the design) to be simulated with different simulation profiles.

Using the Partial Design Simulation feature, you can:
•    Identify individual components of any design and simulate only selected portions
•    Simulate different circuits in the design with different simulation profiles
•    Create a netlist of only a particular portion of the design
•    Compare and merge portions of a design quickly


Read on for more details …

The Partial Design Simulation flow use model

        1.  Create a test bench
        2.  Select parts in the master schematic
        3.  Terminate floating nets in test bench schematic
        4.  Simulate the test bench schematic
        5.  View property differences between test bench and master
        6.  Update the master schematic with modified values

Creating a  test bench

A test bench is like any other new project created in Allegro Design Entry Capture. When you create a test bench, it is listed under the TestBenches node in the Project Manager of the master design:

Activating Components

You can activate components in a test bench using any one of the options:
•    Context-menu for selected parts in the master design
•    Context-menu for selected parts in the test bench design
•    From the Hierarchy Editor

Terminating floating nets in test bench schematic

When you activate only a portion of the design, many nets might be floating because they are not terminated. You can easily resolve this problem by making a floating net search. To perform this search:

1.  Select the test bench design in Capture
2.  From the search menu select Floating Nets as shown in the figure:

   

3. Click the Find button with the binocular shape. All the floating nets requiring terminators are listed in the Floating Nets tab of the Find Window:

   
4.  Double-click a row in the Find Window to select it in the design.
5.  Terminate the floating net properly.

Comparing and Updating Master Design

You can compare the schematics in the master project and test bench to highlight the differences using the SVS utility. This utility displays the differences and uses color codes to highlight the type of change. The result window has two panels, aand the left panel represents the test bench. The differences listed are for the categories: unmatched object (yellow by default), missing objects (red by default), and matching objects (white in color). You can check any of the listed differences in the test bench panel, and propagate the changes to the master design.

 
Please share your experiences with this new capablity.

Jerry "GenPart" Grzenia