Skill access functions for schematic instances

I don't think I understand what you mean by having a "unix link to a master cdf". The CDF is stored in the cell or library property bag (the "data.dm") and you really wouldn't want that to be shared across multiple cells - there are certainly other cell-specific non-CDF properties that could be stored there. Even with the CDF, do all your cells have the same properties and same terminals?

Anyway, to (try to) answer your questions:

1. inst=dbFindAnyInstByName(cvId "MN1") ; assuming it was MN1
   inst~>libName
   inst~>cellName
2. I'm not sure what you mean by "embedded useful information" - i.e. where is this "note text"?

It's unclear to me what you're actually trying to do here or why...

Regards,

Andrew

Only because I don't have time to properly explain my full setup at this moment (but I will do so), would you mind please further clarifying a couple things:

1. When I do:

inst=dbFindAnyInstByName(cvId "MN1")

I get an error because my cvld isn't right (in truth, I'm very fuzzy on all this). I thought I'd be good by starting with a pointer to the schematic and requesting info about MN1 from there, i.e.:

 ddGetObj("myLib" "my_cell" "schematic") gets me a handle to the schematic but I didn't know how to take that return value to get access to details about MN1

By some horsing around I see I can do:

ddGetObj( "myLib" "myCell" )

inst=dbFindAnyInstByName(geGetEditCellView() "MN1")

but something about that seems too unpleasingly "indirect" (can't think of the right word) to get what I'm after. If that's the correct way to go about this then so be it.

2. By "embedded useful information" I mean the schematic could contain a note text (Create -> Note -> Text) e.g. "Cell Specific Info: 42" and I would look for the unique prefix "Cell Specific Info: " and be able to parse out the number I want after that. The idea is that it would be beneficial to be able to read the number "42" when viewing the cell (instead of being hidden away somewhere within the cell's database world). 

I do appreciate that all of this seems very obtuse without the full description of what my setup is. Please bear with me until I can put together a good description for you. 

You'll need the dbId for the cell view so something like this

cvId = dbOpenCellViewByType("myLib" "myCell" "schematic" "" "r")

inst = dbFindAnyInstByName(cvId "MN1")

You can also iterate over instances.  For example:

foreach(inst cvId~>instances

 printf("%L is an instance of %L\n" inst~>name inst~>cellName)

)

If you want to iterate over labels in a schematic, you can do something like this:

foreach(i setof(X cvId~>shapes X~>objType=="label" && ! X~>parent )

  printf("at %L:  text = %L\n" i~>xy  i~>theLabel)

)

"setof()" is a very useful thing to be comfortable with.  The "&& ! X~>parent" is finding unattached labels because I didn't want to pick up net labels although this would also skip labels attached to a note shape.

The simple version of the dd* functions are they do things that you'd do in the library manager.  I.e. tell me the libraries, tell me the cells in a library, tell me the views and files in a cell, etc.  But to actually look in the database for a cellview, you need the db* functions.

-Dan

That's fantastic, Dan :-). I really appreciate you providing the additional background into how these functions work. Very helpful!!