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The Cell Properties Button: Edit Cell properties

The Cell Properties button in the Edit Menu brings up the Cell Property Editor, which is used to view and manipulate properties of the current cell. It is a simplified version of the Property Editor which is used to manipulate the properties of objects contained within the current cell.

The Cell Property Editor contains buttons to add, edit, and remove cell properties. In general, cell properties are assigned internally and can not be modified. The exceptions are the properties listed in the Add menu and further discussed below. Pressing the Add button brings up a pop-up menu containing entries corresponding to properties that can be set or modified by the user. Only the properties that are applicable to the current mode (physical or electrical) are active.

In electrical mode, the Param, Other, and Value entries are active. Selecting the param button allows a param property to be added to the cell. The param property provides support for the subcircuit parameterization feature of WRspice (see the description of the .subckt line). The use of parameterization is briefly described in the section on properties (7.1.1). Selecting Other allows an other property to be added to the cell. These have no meaning to Xic, but might be of use to the user. Any number of other properties can be added. Adding a virtual property will prevent the cell from being included in netlist output, most importantly SPICE output. The cell becomes a ``placeholder'', and the actual .subckt text, which is required to satisfy references, is included in the SPICE file by another means. For example, the cell might represent an opamp, and a .include line can be used to bring in the .subckt block representing the opamp, from a vendor model file.

In physical mode, there are five entries active, allowing modification of physical cell properties.

Flags
The Flags entry is used to set flags in the cell, notably the OPAQUE flag which causes the cell contents to be ignored during extraction.

Flatten
This property can be applied to cells that should be logically considered as part of their containing cell during extraction. This is equivalent to listing the cell name in the FlattenPrefix variable, but is more convenient since the property is saved persistently with the cell, avoiding the need to set the FlattenPrefix variable before extraction.

Other
The Other entry allows an arbitrary property to be assigned to the cell. The user will be prompted for a number and string for the property. These are arbitrary, however there are certain numbers that are reserved by Xic and will not be accepted. Xic will not use these properties, but they may be important for interfacing to third-party applications.

Tmpl Params
The Tmpl Params entry is used when defining template cells (see 2.6). It is used to set or modify the parameter list associated with the template cell.

Tmpl Script
The Tmpl Script entry is used when defining template cells. It is used to set or modify the script which implements the template cell features.


next up previous contents index
Next: The Modify Menu: Modify Up: The Edit Menu: Edit Previous: The Delete Button: Delete   Contents   Index
Stephen R. Whiteley 2012-04-01