Probing Nets, Instances, Pins, and Shapes

Probing allows you to find and highlight certain types of objects from among all the objects present in a design. It lets you highlight the logical connectivity between objects. These objects include nets, terminals, paths, and instances. Probing also lets you select objects to highlight their corresponding elements in a different representation of the same design (schematic and layout windows).

You can use the environment variables, trueColorProbe and probeHighlight to specify the true color highlight. These variables must be set before opening the Virtuoso session.

To select the objects to be highlighted when you probe or select a net, instance, pin, or shape:

1. In the layout window, choose Options – Highlight.
   This displays the Highlight Options form.
   
   
2. In the Highlight section, set the following:
   1. Select the Pins and Instances check boxes if you want to highlight pins and instances on the probed/selected nets.
   2. Select Flightlines if you want all shapes and opens on the probed net to be highlighted.
   3. Select the Visible Shapes Only check box if you want to highlight only the shapes and pins on the visible layers.
   4. Set the Hierarchy Depth to specify the depth up to which you want to display net probing.
   5. Select Dynamic Highlight to highlight any object over which you hover the pointer.
   6. Select the drawing layer to be used for highlighting the nets.
   7. From Highlight Color, select the Cyclic option to use the next color for highlighting subsequent objects.
3. In the Name Filtering section, selectively display or hide the probes only for the specified list of nets.
   1. Use the Filter Mode to specify whether you want to show or hide the probes for specified nets.
   2. In Net Name, specify one or more net names, separated by space, for which you want to show or hide probes.
   3. Click Add to List to add the net names to the list box.
4. Click Apply.

After configuring the options in the Highlight Options form, you can probe nets, shapes, pins, and instances using either pre- or post-selection mode.

Related Topics

Highlight Options Form

Probe Functions

Probing Objects Using Pre-Selection Mode

Probing Objects Using Post-Selection Mode

Graphics Editor Functions

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