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Introduction to Design Review Flow

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The Design Review flow captures and records all communication between reviewers and designers when reviewing a layout cellview in Virtuoso Layout Suite and Virtuoso Schematic Editor. Design Review helps in the consolidation and tracking of every event status change in the system for future reference.

The Design Review Editor form in the Virtuoso Layout Suite provides the interface for the review. This form lets you capture and streamline communication related to the review. You can populate a user-defined checklist so that reviewers can follow a systematic approach for conducting the review for a layout. You can select what checks can be used during the review process. It is optional to use a checklist for a review, but if used, reviewers can use one or more checklist category for a given review. The core task is to review and sign off defects. A designer can refer to the defects, if any, and resolve them.

While review is underway, reviewers can mark defects using the Design Review Editor form in the current layout cellview as an action item for designers to attend to and fix later. Reviews are created with the Review Status automatically set to open. Unless all the defects are resolved, it is not possible to set the Review Status to pending sign off or signed off.

The Audit Trail is also available under Review Status. This lets you investigate a log of status-change events with time stamps and user IDs. Each design review has its own corresponding audit trail. A consolidated HTML summary report can also be used for investigating details of various reviews conducted on the current cellview or across the hierarchy.

The Design Review Flow

In the Design Review flow:

1. The reviewer initiates a specific review by using a checklist that can be suitable for certain designs or customers. Checklists are stored in the SKILL file drvCheckLists.il and can be loaded at startup from the .cadence/dfII/drv directory on a setup.loc path.
   • To override checklist, load drvCheckList.il from CIW, for example, load("xxx/drvCheckList.il").
   • To preview loaded checklist, use drvCheckLists().
   • To append over an existing checklist, use drvCheckLists() and drvRegisterCheckLists().
2. Reviewers create defect markers in a design to pinpoint the spots for fixes. These markers are also shown under predefined categories in the Navigator and Annotation Browser assistants. Each defect is represented by a glyph on the canvas. It is possible to have multiple defects of the same description but one defect glyph is created for one defect at a time.
3. Designers analyze the markers and can choose to fix or ignore them. They can add comments for each defect in the Design Review Editor. Designers can move the mouse over the defect markers on the canvas to see the cross halo in the Navigator or Annotation Browser assistants. A single-click on the marker shows an info balloon, double-click opens the Design Review Editor form, right-click displays the menu to update the marker in the canvas itself. When all defects are attended or resolved, designers can update the Review Status to pending sign off.
4. Subsequently, reviewers can review the fixes again and sign off the design.
   
   When a review is signed off, all its associated defects are automatically hidden.

Prerequisites

The prerequisites for running Virtuoso Design Review Flow are:

• Virtuoso Studio version: IC23.1
• License: Virtuoso Layout Suite XL or higher tiers

Related Topics

Performing Design Review

Design Review Forms