Class Structures

In Virtuoso ADE, much of the underlying code utilizes classes. A class determines the structure and behavior of its instances, which are known as objects. A class inherits information from its parent class (or super class) and passes information to its subclass. Understanding classes will help you use some of the functions that utilize the inheritance mechanism. These functions are called methods.

The following figure shows how the classes are organized.

The class structure is organized as follows:

• The Tools class is the base or root class. Anything declared in the Tools class is inherited by all the other subclasses.
• The Simulation class inherits everything from the Tools class. Simulation is the base class for all simulators, and anything declared in the Simulation class is inherited by all the simulators.
• The Analog class inherits everything from the Simulation class. The Analog class adds all the generic analog simulation features to the set. Anything declared in the Analog class is inherited by all the analog simulators.

If an inherited feature from any level is not applicable to a lower level, you can delete or change the feature at the lower level.