Need to promote pins to one level Above

If you're trying to place pins at a higher level directly over an instance of the lower level, you can do that with the Pin Placer in Virtuoso Layout Suite XL (in IC61X):

Placing a Pin on a Lower-level Instance Terminal
To place a pin directly onto its corresponding instance terminal at a lower
level of the design hierarchy,
1. From the layout window menu bar, choose Place - Pin Placement. The Pin
Placement form is displayed.
2. Select the pin from the pin table.
3. Choose None from the Edge cyclic field.
4. Choose Floating from the Location cyclic field.
5. Click Apply. The pin you selected is placed over its corresponding instance
terminal in the layout window.

This requires the pins to exist in your layout - but that would happen provided that you had a schematic wiring them up and had done a "gen from source" in Layout XL.

Regards,

Andrew.

Not sure I know of a way of doing this without writing some SKILL code to do it. It's a fairly specific requirement (there's the Propagate Net command but that doesn't create pins).

I managed to cheat with only a minimal amount of SKILL code by doing the following:

1. Place the instance at 0:0
2. Use Connectivity->Nets->Propapage Nets and hit the "Set All Net Names to Terminal Name"
3. Use this line of SKILL in the CIW:
   

   foreach(net cv~>nets dbCreateTerm(net net~>name "inputOutput"))

4. Use File->Load Physical View and pick the master (that you instantiated) as the source. Then hit the "None" button and turn on "Pins" within "Load Pins and Update Nets"

That does it - but requires you to place the instance at 0:0.

It wouldn't be terribly difficult to copy the pins however. I just threw this together (not thoroughly tested - I only tested it quickly in IC614):

procedure(ABpropagateInstancePins(@optional (inst car(geGetSelSet())))
let((newNet newTerm newFig newPin cv)
cv=inst~>cellView
foreach(terminal inst~>master~>terminals
newNet=dbMakeNet(cv terminal~>net~>name)
newTerm=dbCreateTerm(newNet terminal~>name terminal~>direction)
foreach(pin terminal~>pins
newPin=nil
; the or part in the next line is to try to handle both OA and CDB
; because in OA you can have more than one fig per pin
foreach(fig pin~>figs || list(pin~>fig)
newFig=dbCopyFig(fig cv inst~>transform)
if(newPin then
dbAddFigToPin(newPin newFig)
else
newPin=dbCreatePin(newNet newFig nil newTerm)
)
)
)
)
t
))

You should be able to select an instance and then call this function, and it will create pins over all the pins within the instance.

Regards,

Andrew.

Sathisha,

The only way I can get that message is if I don't have any instances selected.  Are you sure you have instances (rather than shapes) selected?

Regards,

Andrew.