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Can a cell-level CDF stay with its cell, regardless of library?

caver456

In order to add control to pcell parameters in the edit parameters GUI (i.e. make a cyclic field, change the parameter display text, etc) I understand you need to use CDF.  (Interesting that this support case uses the wording that CDF is "the best method"... that implies there's another way... is that true?) - CDF works nicely, but, it looks like a base-cell-level CDF still depends on the library it was created with, i.e. if you copy that cell to a different library that doesn't have the same CDF, then the pcell edit parameters form will use the default display (i.e. actual pcell parameter names as the field labels; no cyclic fields; etc).  One post mentions that you can copy the CDF of the cell along with the cell itself by using ccpCopy but that seems pretty cumbersome and I didn't get it to work as expected.

The CDF docs seemed to indicate you could attach a CDF to a cell only, but maybe I'm misunderstanding?  Based on all of the above, it looks like a cell-only CDF is only valid for that cell when it is in the library specified in the cdfCreateBaseCellCDF command?

In other words, is there a way to get a nice clean modular independent pcell along with the user-friendly edit parameters form fields, such that the cell can be copied to any library and still work and look the same?

Parents
  • While working the copy CDF question with customer support, I have another question for the forum on this topic of trying to make a completely self-contained and portable pcell.

    In the pcell code I'd like to use function calls to take care of things like repeating contacts along a line, removing duplicates from a list, etc. If those functions are defined outside of the pcDefincePcell function, they must be defined at pcell evaluation time by whatever means (the docs are pretty clear about this), but, that means the pcell is no longer truly self-contained. (I see in the docs you can attach the code to a library, but, can you attach code to a cell in the same manner?) If I put those function definitions inside the pcDefinePcell code, I get pcell markers due to "function blahblah redefined" on every evaluation of the pcell... but otherwise it works as expected. Is there a way to have reusable code within the pcell definition that does not bark about being redefined on every evaluation? It seems like there are some significant syntax changes that would be needed to replace the procedures with macros; is that the only option?
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  • While working the copy CDF question with customer support, I have another question for the forum on this topic of trying to make a completely self-contained and portable pcell.

    In the pcell code I'd like to use function calls to take care of things like repeating contacts along a line, removing duplicates from a list, etc. If those functions are defined outside of the pcDefincePcell function, they must be defined at pcell evaluation time by whatever means (the docs are pretty clear about this), but, that means the pcell is no longer truly self-contained. (I see in the docs you can attach the code to a library, but, can you attach code to a cell in the same manner?) If I put those function definitions inside the pcDefinePcell code, I get pcell markers due to "function blahblah redefined" on every evaluation of the pcell... but otherwise it works as expected. Is there a way to have reusable code within the pcell definition that does not bark about being redefined on every evaluation? It seems like there are some significant syntax changes that would be needed to replace the procedures with macros; is that the only option?
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