Auto Via in Edit-in-Place with metals on higher levels

There is an enhancement request for this (Cadence Change Request #2458518) - one challenge of course is that when you edit-in-place and then place vias taking into account shapes outside of the descendent hierarchy of the cell you are editing, you may end up placing vias where other occurrences of the same cell have different metal above them. Sometimes that will be fine, but that's the reason why it's not done out of the box.

You could use this SKILL code (could be called from a bind key). It will prompt you to enter points for a box to do the auto-via within:

procedure(CCFgenViaInEIP(@optional (win hiGetCurrentWindow()))
  letseq(
    (
      (cv geGetEditCellView(win))
      (tf techGetTechFile(cv))
      (topCV geGetWindowCellView(win))
      (constraintGroupName cstGetDefaultConstraintGroupName(cv "Via"))
      (constraintGroup cstFindConstraintGroupIn(tf constraintGroupName))
      (viaOpts viaGetViaOptions(constraintGroup))
      ; compute transformation from top to EIP cellView
      ; could use dbInvertTransform(dbGetInstTransform(geGetInstHierPath(win))))
      ; but  this was only added in IC25.1 ISR3
      (dbu cv~>DBUPerUU)
      (xform list(win~>d2eTransX/dbu:win~>d2eTransY/dbu win~>d2eTransOrient))
      box topVias
    )
    box=enterBox(?prompts list("Enter area for via creation"))
    ; create the vias in the top cellView and then move them into the
    ; EIP cellView
    topVias=viaGenerateViasInArea(topCV box viaOpts ?startLevel 0 ?stopLevel 32)
    unless(cv==topCV
      foreach(via topVias
        dbMoveFig(via cv xform)
      )
    )
    t
  )
)

Andrew