Hierarchy of Netlisting Views and Switching Views

The view switch list is defined using the simViewList SKILL variable. SE searches for each view in this list in the given order in the cell hierarchy. The first view found is switched with the symbol.

When a device referenced in the schematic is located, the instance of the symbol must be associated with its corresponding schematic or simulator primitive. This process is called switching views. Using the simViewList variable, you can define the list of valid views that must be used as switching views for the target simulator. If no valid view is found, an error message is displayed to indicate netlist generation failure.

Selection of Netlisting Views from a Hierarchy Using Stopping Views

A stopping view is the most detailed description of devices for a simulation. The stopping point view list for the target simulator is defined using the simStopList SKILL variable. SE checks whether each view in the simViewList also exists in the simStopList.

If the view exists in both simViewList and simStopList, the expansion stops and the SE netlist function prints the connectivity information of the instance in the netlist file.
If the view only exists in the simStopList, SE continues to locate the next view that exists only in the simViewList and expands it.

Default View and Stop List Override

To override the default view list or stop list, specify the new list for the current simulator in the .simrc file. This sets the internal list for the current simulator to the .simrc value. You must set the view and stop lists separately for each simulator.

The following table summarizes the simViewList and simStopList variables that correspond to the internal variables listed for SPICE and HSPICE simulators.

simSimulator	simViewList	simStopList
`SPICE`	`spiceSimViewList`	`spiceSimStopList`
`HSPICE`	`hspiceSimViewList`	`hspiceSimStopList`

The following example shows how the netlister uses the view and stop list variables to control its traversal of the design hierarchy:

spiceSimViewList = ’("spice" "cmos.sch" "schematic")
spiceSimStopList = ’("spice")

Here, the netlister stops expansion when it finds a cell with a view named spice and writes the device into the netlist file. If a spice view does not exist, the netlister tries to find the cmos.sch view to expand it. If neither a spice nor a cmos.sch view exists, the netlister looks for the schematic view. If none of these views exist, the netlister generates an error message.

Simulation Environment Help
Product Version IC23.1, June 2023