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How to access pcell instance co-ordinates from within Pcell code.

Jameel
Hi, Is there a way to find out the co-ordinates of the pcell instance from within the pcell code? Say for example, I want to create a pcell that prints a label showing the co-ordinates of the where the pcell is placed. within the code of the pcell I can create the label at the origin but i need to know the co-ordinates of the pcell instance in order to print the label. One way of doing this would be to pass the co-ordinate of the pcell instance as parameters, but am not sure if this is the correct way to do it. Thanks, -Jameel
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  • Andrew Beckett
    Lawrence, Jameel,

    The problem with the original code is that it was accessing the variable ilInst directly in the pcell code. This makes no sense because:

    a) ilInst is only set as evaluated labels are evaluated and the displayed
    b) the pcell has no knowledge of the instance that instantiates it - this is obvious when you realise that you could have many instances of the same variant; the pcell only gets evaluated once (it would be very inefficient otherwise).

    Normally the label display functions need to return an atomic (often a string) value.

    So you'd need to make the label:

       label=dbCreateLabel(
                pcCellView ;; cellview label appears in
                list("TEXT" "drawing") ;; layer on which label appears
                (0:0) ;; where label appears
    "sprintf(nil \"special point = %P\" ilInst~>xy)"
                "centerCenter" ;; label justification
              "R0" ;; label orientation
                "stick" ;; font
                10.0 ;; height for the label
            )
    label~>labelType="ILLabel"

    That way the sprintf is the expression evaluated during label display.

    Regards,

    Andrew
Reply
  • Andrew Beckett
    Lawrence, Jameel,

    The problem with the original code is that it was accessing the variable ilInst directly in the pcell code. This makes no sense because:

    a) ilInst is only set as evaluated labels are evaluated and the displayed
    b) the pcell has no knowledge of the instance that instantiates it - this is obvious when you realise that you could have many instances of the same variant; the pcell only gets evaluated once (it would be very inefficient otherwise).

    Normally the label display functions need to return an atomic (often a string) value.

    So you'd need to make the label:

       label=dbCreateLabel(
                pcCellView ;; cellview label appears in
                list("TEXT" "drawing") ;; layer on which label appears
                (0:0) ;; where label appears
    "sprintf(nil \"special point = %P\" ilInst~>xy)"
                "centerCenter" ;; label justification
              "R0" ;; label orientation
                "stick" ;; font
                10.0 ;; height for the label
            )
    label~>labelType="ILLabel"

    That way the sprintf is the expression evaluated during label display.

    Regards,

    Andrew
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