Images of symbol view generated with hiGenerateThumbnails do no show text

Hi,

If it works for schematics, then make it a schematic !

You will find below a snippet to do that. It's just a simple proof of concept that should work for basic cases.

It is not robust, for instance it will fail if library is not writable.

I had the same problem, I wrote a function to export symbols to SVG format.

It's quite straightforward but you have to manage all the different shape types...

Hope this helps.

Aurélien

(defun cst_copy_to_cv (lib cell view cv)
  "Copy everything from LIB/CELL/VIEW into CV"
  (let ( (src_cv (dbOpenCellViewByType lib cell view)) )
    (unwindProtect
      (foreach lpp src_cv->lpps
        (foreach shape lpp->shapes
          (dbCopyShape shape cv)
          ))
      (dbClose src_cv)
      )))

(defun cst_get_size (lib cell view)
  "Return appropriate thumbnail size for LIB/CELL/VIEW"
  (letseq ( (cv        (dbOpenCellViewByType lib cell view))
            (view_type (ddMapGetFileViewType (ddGetObj lib cell view "*")))
            (scale     (case view_type
                         ( ("schematic" "schematicSymbol") 150. )
                         ( "maskLayout"                     15. )
                         ( t                                15. )
                         ))
            )
    (unwindProtect
      (destructuringBind ((x0 y0) (x1 y1)) cv->bBox
        (list (ceiling (x1-x0)*scale) (ceiling (y1-y0)*scale))
        )
      (dbClose cv))))

(defun cst_generate_icon (lib cell view file "tttt")
  "Generate thumbnail icon for LIB/CELL/VIEW"
  (let ( (view_type (ddMapGetFileViewType (ddGetObj lib cell view "*"))) )
    (case view_type
      ;; Generate thumbnail for schematics and layout views
      ( ("schematic" "maskLayout") (hiGenerateThumbnails ?lib lib ?cell cell ?view view ?filePath file ?sizes (list (cst_get_size lib cell view))) )
      ;; For symbol, generate a temporary schematic view and extract its thumbnail
      ( "schematicSymbol"
        (assert (not (ddGetObj lib cell "schematic_symbol"))
          "%A/%A/%A exists already!" lib cell "schematic_symbol")
        (let ((cv (dbOpenCellViewByType lib cell "schematic_symbol" "schematic" "w")))
          (unwindProtect
            (progn
              (cst_copy_to_cv lib cell view cv)
              (dbSave  cv)
              (dbClose cv)
              (cst_generate_icon lib cell "schematic_symbol" file)
              )
            (ddDeleteObj (ddGetObj lib cell "schematic_symbol"))
            )))
      ;; Other cases are not supported
      ( t (error "Unsupported view type: %A" view_type) )
      )))

In IC23.1 there's also schExportSVG() - not on a menu yet, but the SKILL API exists.

Andrew

I tried the function (in 23.1) on a simple schematic and when I try to view the image it isn't very readable when I use the default settings:.

Ideally I would like to see it with a black background and the usual colors.  Is that possible?

So I tried all the options and tried different ways of viewing the test.svg file and it turns out that if I view it in firefox, it looks exactly as I had hoped!

Symbol:

And Schematic:

This will work for this application.  Thank you!

Upon closer inspection I found what I think is a bug with the function. It seems to do a great job of converting the schematic but seems to ignore layer visibility.  In this case, there are multiple copies of the labels for the transistor that are on different layer purpose pairs.  In our schematics, only one of these LPP sets are visible at any given time so the schematic is readable.  However, in this case the new plot function shows ALL LPP even if they have been made invisible:

Can we make the function obey the LPP visibility property?

It's not necessarily a bug (I can see a benefit in outputting layers regardless of the current visibility), but I can also see a need for what you are trying to do. I filed a change request, #2977529 asking for a way to honour the visibility. You might want to contact customer support and ask for a duplicate to be filed on your behalf as customer requests tend to get higher priority.

Regards,

Andrew

Great!  I've also asked our support team to raise this as a request.