Creating Pins Automatically in the Pin Tool

The Auto-Create Pins form provides options to search for net shapes in a design and create boundary and buried pins automatically on these net shapes.

To create pins automatically:

1. Open the Auto-Create form using one of the following methods:
   • Choose Plan – Pin Planning – Pin Tool. The Pin Browser is displayed. In the Pin Tool, choose Create – Auto-Create Pins.
   • Click the Auto-Create Pins button on the Floorplan toolbar.
   • Click the Auto-Create Pins button on the Design Planner toolbar.
2. In the Shape Search section, select All or Selected to specify the location in which the net shapes are to be searched.
   
   
   • (Virtuoso Layout Suite EXL) Select Hierarchical Depth to enable hierarchical pin creation and pin promotion from a lower level to the top level.
   • Select Consider Net Shape on Routing Layers Only to restrict the search for net shapes to the routing layers.
   • Select Consider Net Shape on Selected Purpose and select a purpose.
3. In the Generate Options section, select Create and Delete to delete all pins that were created by the Auto-Create Pins tool, create pins hierarchically, and promote them from a lower level to a higher level.
   
   
   • Select Delete Pin Criteria to delete existing pins in the layout canvas before generating new ones to avoid creating duplicate pins.
   • Select Schematic Aware to check for the presence of matching terminals in the corresponding schematic net geometries before creating pins.
   • Select Check for Duplicate Pins to check for any similar pins in the design. If a similar pin is found, a duplicate pin is not created.
4. Set Signal Pin Generation to either one or both options: Boundary Shape Pin and Buried Whole Shape Pin.
   
   
   • Select Single or Multiple to specify the number of signal pins to be generated when multiple boundary or buried shapes belong to the same net.
   • Select Top Layer or Use Layers to specify the layers on which buried pins are to be created.
5. In the Power Pin Generation section, specify the type of whole shape pins to be created - boundary, buried or both.
   
   
   • Specify whether to create Top Layer or Use Layers of boundary shapes and buried shapes.
   • Click Define to select the layers in which the pins must be generated. The selected layers are listed in the Layer Selection box.
6. In the Pin Attributes section, you can provides attributes for the new pins to be generated.
   
   
7. In Signal Pin Size section, you can set the pin size for Boundary and Buried pin shapes to Auto, Whole Shape, Honor Min Length, or Custom Length and create square pins or custom sized pins as per underlying shape or minLength constraint.
   • Click Define to open the Layer Custom Length table, where you can edit the length value.
     
     
   Consider two scenarios where initial pin length is specified and the custom length is modified.
   

   Custom Length	Pin Resize Output	Example
   Greater than minimum length	Pin is resized to the custom length.	Pin length = 0.4 Custom length = 3.0 Minimum length = 0.5 Pin length is resized to 3.0.
   Smaller than minimum length	Custom length is auto-corrected to the minimum length by default in the Layer Custom Length table.	Pin length = 0.4 Custom length = 0.45 Minimum length = 0.5 Pin length remains at 0.5.

8. In Pin Layer, specify the layer on which pins are to be generated. The available options are: Same as Shape LPP, Same Layer, Custom Purpose, and Custom LPP.
9. Set Pin Connectivity to one the pin connectivity models for the pins that are generated. The available options are: Strongly Connected, Must join, and Must Connect.
10. Select Create Text Label for Pins to create text labels for the pins that are generated. Label texts are derived from their terminal names.
11. Select Enable Coloring to use the multiple patterning color engine to assign colors to the new pins based on their positions relative to the WSP tracks.
12. Select Create Metal Shapes Under Pin to create a metal shape under each auto-created level-1 (soft block) pin.
13. Click Show to see a preview of how the settings would be applied to the design. Click Hide to close the preview.
14. Click Apply to generate pins in the layout canvas. Click OK to create pins and close the form.

Pins are automatically generated in the layout canvas. Their placement status is set to Placed.

The following image shows a power buried (whole shape) pin generated by the Auto-Create Pins tool.

Related Topics

Auto-Create Pins Form

Pin Shapes Created for Straddling Shapes in Auto Create Pins Form

Hierarchical Pin Creation using the Pin Tool