What's Good About ASA Schematics? Numerous Improvements in The SPB16.3 Release!

Allegro System Architect (ASA) also known as System Connectivity Manager (SCM) allows you to generate a schematic for your logical design. You can use the generated schematic for documentation purposes, or for communicating various aspects of the design to your team members or customers and for exporting it as an independent DEHDL design. Though the generated schematic is mainly for documentation purposes, for aesthetic purposes you can modify component placements and these can be preserved while regenerating the documentation schematic. The contents on the documentation schematic can be controlled using various setup options.

Several Placement Improvements

• Denser schematics
  • Associated Components closer to the Pins
  • Single ended series terminations
  • Manual routing between main & associated components is possible
• Port cleanup
  • I/O ports added for block level schematics interface signals
  • I/O ports coming from lower level blocks removed from flat project schematic
• Custom placement distance between components
  • Padding around the component based on a directive value
  • Useful for cross reference & global routing

Placement Setup

• Grid Size: Specify the grid size to use in the generated schematic.
  Note: This grid size is used internally by the Schematic Generator (SchGen) and is independent of the grid size specified in Design Entry HDL.
• Page Margins: Specify the page margins in grid multiples to determine the drawing area
  • Top - Specify the top-most point on the desired drawing area as a multiple of the grid size
  • Left - Specify the left-most point on the desired drawing area as a multiple of the grid size
  • Bottom - Specify the bottom-most point on the desired drawing area as a multiple of the grid size
  • Right - Specify the right-most point on the desired drawing area as a multiple of the grid size
• Component to Component Spacing: Specify the grid spacing between any two components, as a multiple of the grid size

Routing Setup

• Handle Concatenated Signals: Select this check box if you want to add a prefix to signals in case of concatenation of signal names
  • Signal name prefix to be used for concatenation: Specify the value to prefix to the signal names in case of concatenation
•  Show NC for unconnected bits: Select this check box if you want show NC for unconnected bits in the generated schematic

I look forward to your input on how you're using these new SPB16.3 features!

Jerry "GenPart" Grzenia