How do I map signal values to meaningful string in simvision?

I haven't followed the link you posted as I'm not mad keen on following arbitrary links people post in forums, but I believe you want the mnemonic map feature in SimVision. This can be done via the GUI then saved to a Tcl script for reuse, or you can use the raw Tcl commands in SimVision to build the maps programmatically.

Refer to https://support.cadence.com/apex/techpubDocViewerPage?xmlName=simvistclcmds.xml&title=SimVision%20Tcl%20Commands%20--%20Contents%20-%20&hash=&c_version=21.03&path=SimVisTclCmds/SimVisTclCmds21.03/SimVisTclCmdsTOC.html for the SimVision Tcl commands (make sure you enter these at the SimVision Tcl prompt not the Xcelium Tcl prompt).

Pasting an example from the above docs link:

mmap new -name "Current State" -contents {
    {‘d0 -label "idle"}
    {‘d1 -label "five"}
    {‘d2 -label "ten"}
    {‘d3 -label "fifteen"}
    {‘d4 -label "twenty"}
    {‘d5 -label "twenty-five"}
    {‘d6 -label "thirty"}
    {‘d7 -label "thirty-five"}
    {‘d8 -label "forty"}
    {‘d9 -label "forty-five"}
    {‘d10 -label "fifty"}
    {‘d11 -label "nickel_out"}
    {‘d12 -label "dime_out"}
    {‘d13 -label "two_dime_out"}}

@stephenh no need to click your guess was good enough :-)...ok, so I created a mnemonic map, now what? how do I attach it to a signal in the waveform so that it shows these values instead of the numeric ones?

The simplest way is to run the Tcl script in SimVision to create the map, thereafter you can right click on the value for a signal in the waveform, and instead of changing radix, select the map name.

Example at the bottom of this app note: https://support.cadence.com/apex/ArticleAttachmentPortal?id=a1Od0000000nWEkEAM&pageName=ArticleContent 

That works! thanks