The Read File Page

This page provides a button to initiate reading a design data file into Xic, and various controls which set modes which will apply while reading.

Merge Into Current mode
This menu provides the option of merging the contents of another cell into the current cell, possibly recursively. Only the content associated with the present display mode is affected, for example in Electrical mode, only the electrical cells will be affected, the physical cells are untouched. Part of the motivation for this mode is to facilitate separate development of electrical and physical designs, allowing them to be merged at a later time.

If No Merge Into Current is the current selection, then merging is turned off. Reading a cell of the same name as the current cell can either overwrite the current cell or the new cell can be ignored, depending on how name clashes are currently handled (as set in the Setup page of this panel).

If one of Merge Cell Into Current or Merge Into Current Recursively is selected, and the Read File button is pressed, the following operations will be performed. The user will be prompted for a file name. The user can respond with the name of a file, or the name of a cell in memory.

If the user passes a cell name found in memory, the contents of that cell will be duplicated and added to the current cell. This completes the command. Note that there is no difference between the Merge Cell Into Current and Merge Into Current Recursively modes in this case.

If the file name is found on disk, the file will be opened in a temporary symbol table. If a cell is found in the temporary symbol table that has the same name as the current cell, the contents of that cell will be merged into the current cell. Otherwise, the user will be prompted for a cell name. If the user enters a valid cell name, the contents of that cell will be duplicated into the current cell. If the menu is set to Merge Cell Into Current, the command is done. The temporary symbol table will be cleared.

If a recursive merge is selected, the hierarchy of the current cell is traversed. For each cell in the hierarchy, if a cell with the same name exists in the temporary symbol table, the contents of that cell will be duplicated into its counterpart under the current cell. Care is taken to handle the details of this recursive merge cleanly.

There is no undo capability for this command, so be sure to save a copy of the current cell hierarchy before merging, in case of trouble.

Cell Name Mapping
This group of controls manages the cell name aliasing feature. The Auto-Rename button found here has the same functionality as the Auto Rename selection in the cell name resolution option menu. This applies only when reading archive input files, and not native cell files. The prefix/suffix modifications are applied only in input initiated from this panel or script functions.

Layer Modification
The layer change module allows layer filtering and/or mapping to be applied during the read operation. This applies when reading physical data only.

Windowing and Flattening
Windowing is available only when flattening. When flattening, all information read from a file is mapped intto the top-level cell in memory. Users should realize that flat representation can require lots of memory.

Conversion Scale Factor
The Conversion Scale Factor provides an entry area where a scale factor to be applied during reading can be entered. Values of 0.001 through 1000.0 are acceptable. This will apply to input initiated from this panel only.

Read File
The Read File button will prompt the user for a file to read into Xic, in the manner of the Open command. However for archive files scaling, layer filtering, etc. may be applied to the cells read from the file through use of this panel and not via the Open command.