Insert wait time

removed bec of formatting issue

Hi Guys
Its strange I was wondering about the same issue for the last couple of days

Ideally I am running a batch program from my skill (updating all the dra files) then refresh the symbols inside the design

but that doesn't work the way I imagined, allegro just keeps refreshing the symbols long before I modify the symbols

so I thought about a scheme why not
1. set a system variable using setx before calling the batch file
system("setx timer=0")
2. then call the batch file, the batch file has a for loop and it launches the allegro for all the dra files in the directory
3. at the end of the batch set the timer1 to 1

in skill launch a loop to check for timer value 1 and get out (the end of batch would trigger this)

but my diabolical scheme didn't work since I am stuck at this point

setx works fine and i can see the variable in my user environment
but when i immediately try to check using  getShellEnvVar("timer") the results are nil

it looks like allegro has to be relaunched to be able to read the system variable

I would appreciate any comments on this or how to set and read the environment variable in the same session

regards
Venkata

If putting a UI based program in a bat file sometimes you need to use the cmd.exe "start" command to have the bat file wait for the UI program to finish. For example, if you want to run allegro from a bat file you would need:

  start /wait allegro

 See http://ss64.com/nt/start.html

The problem you have with setx is that it only effects new programs not existing programs. Allegro does not dynamically update itself based upon changes to system environment variables that might be changed by its spawned children. Allegro reads the system environment variables only at startup.

Hi fxffxf

I do use the /wait

the problem is I call the batch file from a master design now the skill calls the batch and goes on to execute the next commands

the skill would execute the refresh symbols long before all the dra batch edits are done

regards

You should file a query with Cadence and include a simple testcase because I don't see this happening. I use the Skill system command to run a bat file which runs allegro.exe