[Xcircuit-dev] RE: How to flatten a symbol?

[R. Timothy Edwards]

Dear Svenn,

> When looking into the file each included symbol is stored separately
> and also shows up in the library view.

What I wanted was to not have any library dependent upon another library,
so that nobody runs into the situation where they cannot load a library
because they're missing some dependency.  I worked around the problem of
redundancy by having objects with the same name compared against each
other, and the incoming one discarded if it matches an existing object
(this was broken for several revisions, and fixed in 3.2.12).

> Is there a way to make a symbol self-contained and flat so that all
> geometric structures are stored within the new symbol and flattened?

There's no simple command to flatten a structure.  However, I don't 
recommend flattening objects to get the behavior you want.  Instead,
mark the objects that you don't want to see as "hidden" before you
save the library by going to the library where they are and typing
'H' (the key command for "Library Hide").  You can accomplish the same
thing by editing the library and adding "% hidden" on its own line
just above "begingate".  You will note that this is done in some of
the files that come with the distribution---analoglib2.lps, for instance
defines an object "source" which is a just a blank circle with a wire
coming from the top and bottom.  It is used by symbols "Vsource",  
"Isource", and "ACsource" but does not appear in the library.

As an aside note, you can always flatten an object by pushing ">"
into each object instance, selecting everything in it, typing "c"
for "copy", then typing "<" to get back to the original object.
But rotation, scale, etc., will not be preserved, it can be tedious
if the object has a complicated hierarchy, and I agree that it would
be helpful to have a real "flatten" command in XCircuit.  I will
give this some thought, but at the moment I am trying to get XCircuit
to do correct netlist extraction of bus notation, so you probably
will want to remind me again in about a month.

                                        Regards,
                                        Tim


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