how to use variable in defcell

No, the documentation makes it clear that this must be a literal string. It's not a SKILL function - it's a definition using an s-expression within a TSG file.

You could of course template it yourself using something like this:

let(((tsgFile "myfile.tsg") tsgPort cellName tsgTemplate)
  cellName="realCellName"
  tsgPort=outfile(tsgFile)
  tsgTemplate=`defcell(,cellName defSymbol( nil ))
  pprint(tsgTemplate tsgPort)
  newline(tsgPort)
  close(tsgPort)
  ;(tsgFile)
)

Andrew

No, the documentation makes it clear that this must be a literal string. It's not a SKILL function - it's a definition using an s-expression within a TSG file.

You could of course template it yourself using something like this:

let(((tsgFile "myfile.tsg") tsgPort cellName tsgTemplate)
  cellName="realCellName"
  tsgPort=outfile(tsgFile)
  tsgTemplate=`defcell(,cellName defSymbol( nil ))
  pprint(tsgTemplate tsgPort)
  newline(tsgPort)
  close(tsgPort)
  ;(tsgFile)
)

Andrew

Interesting, I found the defcell function is a script I wrote years ago to create symbols. And yes, it writes a file, then loads it to generate the symbols. I'd forgotten why I'd done it that way.

There must be a better/alternative way to create a symbol without depending on writing to a file.

 dbOpenCellViewByType seems to work fine. I'd tried it before but it returned error because cellview did not exist. I had to specify "w" and not "r" for it to work.

However, I still get error with dbSave and dbClose on the symbol

symbolID = dbOpenCellViewByType(testLibName testCellName "symbol" "schematicSymbol" "w")
dbSave(symbolId)
dbClose(symbolId)

*Error* dbSave: argument #1 should be a database object (type template = "dggggg") - nil

The dbSave and dbClose work with layout and schematic views. But I get the above error with symbol views.

Typo. Switched letter "D" to "d".

It's all good now.

problem solved.

Thanks,

Apparently dbOpenCellViewByType(testLibName testCellName "symbol" "schematicSymbol" "w") creates a cellview call "symbol" but it is an empty cellview.

MorrisDH said:

Apparently dbOpenCellViewByType(testLibName testCellName "symbol" "schematicSymbol" "w") creates a cellview call "symbol" but it is an empty cellview

Of course. Why would it do anything else? How would it know what the content was, given that all you did was open the cellVIew in write (which means overwrite) mode? You could also use "a" which would create if it didn't exist, but leave the existing contents.

If you are wanting an alternative to tsg() (text-to-symbol generator - I see no problem with the fact that it needs a file as input), you could use the schViewToView functionality, particularly schPinListToSymbol - there you can give info on the pins and it will construct a tsg-like symbol using the current tsg template (which can be set with the schematic tsgTemplateType cdsenv var, with the name-to-file mapping being controlled via the tsgTemplateMasters SKILL variable - search in the documentation for more details). You can also use schSchemToPinList to get a pin list from a schematic. Overall this approach has less flexibility than everything that tsg() offers, but it's usually sufficient...

Andrew

Yep. I went back to the template. I'd actually done something similar in a script I wrote a few years ago. I'd forgotten all about it.

Appreciate your patient assistance.

Created this procedure based on the template. 

procedure( makeTheSymbol(@key cellName libName)
  let(((tsgFile "myfile.tsg") tsgPort tsgTemplate)
    tsgPort=outfile(tsgFile)
    tsgTemplate=`defcell(,cellName defsymbol( nil ))
    pprint(tsgTemplate tsgPort)
    newline(tsgPort)
    close(tsgPort)
    lmOpenLib(libName)
    load(tsgFile)
  ) ; let
) ; procedure

It appears to work perfectly but I do get a warning.

*WARNING* TSG: Invalid identifier

Is that something I should be concerned about?

That's because you have defsymbol( nil ) . The nil is unexpected and hence incorrect. If you just have defsymbol( ) then it wouldn't have this issue.

Andrew