Quickly schematic-viewing a gates file

SimVision has a number of layouts built in that you can specify at the command line, but sadly not a schematic-only one. You can define your own layouts though, so open sSimVision once (no design needed), and open the Schematic Tracer window, close all other windows, and go to the menu Window->Layout->Save and save it as "gates".

Now you can do this from teh command line:

irun myfile.vg -y mylibs/tsmc18 -access +rwc -createdebugdb -gui -layout gates

Explanation: irun is the one-stop front-end which will compile and elaborate your design; -gui opens simvision, and -layout gates tells it to open your saved layout. "-access +rwc" enables schematic connectivity tracing (which would be disabled by default for performance reasons). "-createdebugdb" tells the elaborator to save a special debug database to make SimVision load and trace shcematics quicker.

In addition to the approach using a layout, one could write a script that passes the top module of the design to the schematic and fills it.  Content of the "schematic_fill.tcl" script is below.

You would invoke it like:

irun myfile.vg -y mylibs/tsmc18 -simvisargs "-schematic -input schematic_fill.tcl" +gui -s -access +rwc -createdebugdb

schematic_fill.tcl:

# Get the current design, add it to the schematic, and fill it.
array set info [simcontrol info]
set scope [lindex [split $info(Design) ":."] 1]

# Attempt to select it.
select set -type scope $scope

# Check if we have something selected.
if {[select get -type scope] == ""} {
    # Nothing selected. Try selecting ":" scope for VHDL.
    set scope ":"
    select set -type scope $scope
    if {[select get -type scope] == ""} {
        error "Unable to extract top level scope from design."
    }
}

# Add the selected scope to the schematic
schematic add -selected

# Fill the scope
schematic invoke Edit>FillModules

Please give this a try.

Thanks.

- Doug