Showing contents of a cell while dragging

hello Grover,

Are you in 'True Color Drag' ?

Please run this command in teh CIW to know but make sure the last window active was the layout in which you have seen the problem :

if it returns:

- nil : you are not in ''True Color Drag'

- t : you are in 'True Color Drag'

When you are in 'True Color Drag' and you have reached the maximum number of figures which could be contained in the drag then instead of seeing all teh shapes you will see only the Bbox of the instances which in you case seems to be impacted by the draglines as well.

If the 'True Color Drag' was 't then please run the following command: 

hiGetCurrentWindow()->trueColorDrag=nil

You should now see only the yellow box of your instance.

You can switch back to the original setting at any time during the edit by chaging it back to 't.

In case you really woudl like to see what's inside and you don't worry too much about performance you could increase the number of maximum figures in the drag with the following command:

Found out the current max number of figures: hiGetCurrentWindow()->maxDragFig

Set the max drag figures: hiGetCurrentWindow()->maxDragFig=5000

Those two settings are per window then no impact on other window or newly open window.

In 614 those settings will be available in the Options -> Display form.

Thanks,

Alex

Hi Alex,

I've tried both options, buth neither helps me. Setting trueColorDrag to nil only makes the Bbox yellow instead of red, and my maxDragFig was 500, and changing it to 5000 doesn't help. Note that this problem doesn't just occur when I try to move an entire CPU, but also with a single transistor (which contains maybe 6 polygons).

Any other suggestions?

Hi Grover,

If you want to see all the instance details when you are moving the only way is to increase the maximum of figures until you reach the number of shapes contained in your instance.

If you need to see the prboundary or pins I would suggest that you use the Option -> Display to display instances as 'prBoundary'  instead of 'Bbox' and turn ON Instance Pins. If you don't have any prBoundary in your instance you could try to turn ON 'Use True BBox'.

In case of transistors sometimes we don't know how many shapes you have inside and it could be much larger than expected (all contacts are individual shapes).

Have you tried to turn OFF the draglines (F3 button during move) as the draglines are as well part of the drag ?

Thanks,

Alex

Hi Alex,

I've tried all the display options you've mentioned, and none change anything. Turning off draglines using F3 just turns off the draglines (obviously), which makes the whole operation completely invisible.

Turning up the maxDragFig, even to its maximum (2147483647) doesn't fix it either.

I've included a screenshot just to make sure we're talking about the same thing. On the left I'm dragging an instance after Shift-F, on the right after Ctrl-F (click to see the whole picture).

 It looks very much as though you're using the austriamicrosystems hitkit 4.00 for one of their 0.35um processes. I have exactly the same problem. You'll notice that this is a problem that only affects their pcells, it's not all instances that have the problem.

With IC 6.1.3.1 everything worked fine.

I imagine that we need to wait for an update from AMS themselves.

You're right, I now see that it does only affect their pcells. I'd never thought that this would be a design kit issue though.... Guess I'll have to ask the foundry guys then. Anyway, thanks!

 Hi All,

I just wanted to let you all know that this is due to the tools themselves and not any particular PDK etc.  Basically when performing a Move, anything more than 1 level down in the layout hierarchy does not display detail, just a box or outline.  R&D are working to try to improve the display detail during a Move operation, hopefully in ISR2 of IC614. The amount of code changes required means that additional testing and stability checks are needed before releasing.  Master CCR is 500889.

Best regards,

Lawrence.

 Further details I've been told:

"The problem occurs when the design library is attached to one tech library, but the instances used in the layout of the design library are attached to another tech library."

 So in the AMS case, your library is probably attached to TECH_C35B4, whereas the instances from PRIMLIB are attached to TECH_C35B3.

 Alex, Lawrence,

I think you have misunderstood the original poster's question. Looks to me when he moves, not only is the content not showing, the bbox is not showing either. He only sees flight lines.

This is VLS XL right?

Teng-Kiat

Yes, almost. The BBox is shown only in "don't-show-contents" mode (the right half of the picture).

And yes, I'm using Layout XL.