[Xcircuit-dev] Cadence DFII to XCircuit translator

[Satya Narayan Mishra]

On Sat May 20 2006 19:34, R. Timothy Edwards wrote:
> Dear Satya,
>
> > I was wondering if anyone has attempted a Cadence DFII to XCircuit
> > schematic translator. From a cursory glance, it seems rather easy
> > to do. Here are the steps for the translation:
> >
> > 1. dump the DFII schematic using dbWriteSkill
> > 2. read this schematic in a Skill/TCL program and emit XCircuit TCL
> > 3. Load this XCircuit TCL script into XCircuit.
>
> How does dbWriteSkill compare to exporting EDIF?  I was considering
> the approach by writing an EDIF-to-xcircuit converter, mainly because
> doing anything with Skill code in Cadence requires a license (which I
> have now, but that's not a solution for everyone, obviously).  Or is
> step 2 somehow easier than taking an EDIF parser (there's a decent
> one available in open source) and writing convert-to-xcircuit
> routines into it?
>
> The general principle of generating input for xcircuit via Tcl
> commands is sound.  I have done it before.  The commands for
> generating elements in xcircuit are not used by the GUI, however, and
> tend to be rather obscure.

Dear Tim,

I hadn't looked into EDIF, indeed I had no knowledge of it until your 
e-mail. Code generated by dbWriteSkill will completely recreate the 
schematic. I don't know if the EDIF output is as complete (or nearly 
complete). EDIF, which is also supported by other vendors, would be a 
better solution. I will look into this when I get to work next week.

The Skill language doesn't need a license (Cadence won't let one have 
the software without any licenses though), but the debugger, lint and 
such need the Skill Development license. I do not expect to have to use 
the debugger and lint tools for this program.

Satya