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Cascaded display.drf loading

CADcasualty

I have an on-going battle with Virtuoso trying to make things work and/or not look disgusting with everything on a white background (so I can always have WYSIWYG when I print stuff). I made my own display.drf file that contains (so far) only the things I need to make schematics look good on a white background. My most recent hurdle was figuring out what defined the color of selected items like wires or labels etc. Before I fixed it, that color was white (which annoyingly makes the selected items invisible on a white background). For the technology I'm using, the solution proved to be the following line in my display.drf file:

; color of selected items (lpp = align/drawing).
( display defaultPacket blank dashed red red outline )

However, I've since found as I bring more tools into the fold that I need to prevent my display.drf file from loading first because (for reasons unknown to me) it appears to block other display.drf files from other libraries loading. To get around that I added the following to my .cdsinit:

; Force Cadence to load the tsmc18 library and read it's display.drf file first
ddGetObj("tsmc18")~>techLibName
; Now superimpose my display.drf file on top of it
; The nil means it won't ask you to save it when you quit Virtuoso
drLoadDrf("./display.drf" nil)

After I do the above, everything in my schematics continues to look as per my display.drf *except* for the color of the selected items as outlined above - they're coming out as white again :-(.

I'm guessing maybe another rogue display.drf file is being loaded after mine, but darned if I know to determine or fix that. Any ideas?

Note that I realize I could just let everything load up, go into the Display Resource Editor and then merge my display.drf file into it and save the result (assuming "merge" means anything set in my file overrides existing stuff). However, that would become a maintenance nightmare after a while as I move from project to project.

  • More info: I should add that if I go into the Display Resource Editor I can still confirm that align/drawing is still set to red i.e. it doesn't seem to be overwritten.

    Now I'm really not sure what's going on.

  • in reply to CADcasualty

    I'm not sure why you're looking at the align/drawing LPP. As I mentioned in this other post, it's the hilite/drawing layer that matters for selection in the schematic. To find out the packet name (which may be different depending on which technology library your design library is attached to), open a schematic in your design library and then enter:

    techGetLPPacketName(techGetLP(techGetTechFile(geGetEditCellView()) list("hilite" "drawing")))

    This will tell you the packet name for the hilite/drawing layer for that technology. I checked a few PDKs and they are a bit inconsistent about the packet name (even from the foundry you mention).

    Andrew.

  • in reply to Andrew Beckett

    Thanks for your reply. 

    I did try your command to get that packet name and it yielded "hilite_drawing" (see the attached picture). However, when I go into the Display Resource Editor I can't find it anywhere (also shown that attached picture). The only thing I could find that does make any difference to selected items coloring is align/drawing (packet name = defaultPacket). When I have my display.drf ordering issue, if I select some stuff it all disappears because it colors as white and it's on a white background. I've tried for ages to figure out what's causing that but haven't found the solution.

  • in reply to CADcasualty

    You are looking at the packet names for that layer purpose with the US_8ths library. What matters is the packet names for the technology library your design library is attached to - i.e.

    techGetTechFile(geGetEditCellView())~>libName

    So change the library cyclic choice to the right library name, and then search.

    Andrew.

  • in reply to Andrew Beckett

    Holy smoke - that was it! Thanks so much. I now have the right selection colours (and notice how I spelled that last word in your honor)(although I didn't spell honor in your honor ;-) )

  • in reply to CADcasualty

    Thanks! Thanks too for uploading a picture - as the saying goes, a picture is certainly worth a thousand words!

    Andrew.

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