Return value in Pcells??

I doubt it has been asked, because I don't think it makes any sense. A PCell is a cellView which you can place an instance of in a layout or schematic (say). What would a return value even mean or where would you expect to access it?

Regards,

Andrew.

Sorry, let me be more clear.

A return value on pcell creation. After the pcell has been created, I need some data already used in the pcell (not affected by any parameter). I can define it again, but I want to reduce the risk for errors.

I create a pcell with dbCreateParamInst. The skill code of the pcell is the executed. There are some variables (coordinates) there that I want to use.

I create a pcell with dbCreateParamInst. The skill code of the pcell is the executed.

But maybe that's not exactly how it works

If you create a pcell with dbCreateParamInst, the SKILL won't necessarily be executed - it's only executed if the particular set of parameters has not already been created - otherwise it creates an instance which will use the subMaster already created. So relying on dbCreateParamInst to "return" values from the SKILL code wouldn't make sense (even if it was possible, which it isn't) because you can't guarantee that the code is actually executed.

If you want to reference values calculated within the PCell, the right way to do that is to store them somewhere - and probably the easiest way to store them somewhere unique to the variant in question is to put them as cellView properties on the pcCellView - that way they will be stored on the subMaster cellView.

So within the PCell code, you could do:

pcCellView~>myValue1=yourComputedVariable
pcCellView~>myValue2=yourOtherComputedVariable

of course, call the properties something that makes sense for you.

Then if you've done:

inst=dbCreateParamInst(...)

you can then do:

inst~>master~>myValue1

to retrieve the value. I use this approach sometimes when I'm writing an abut function for VLS XL which needs to retrieve values best computed in the PCell itself - the abut function can look up relevant computations stored on the subMaster this way.

Regards,

Andrew