FAQs & Do's and Don'ts

Do- You can find several Cadence user documents under usr/local/cadence/install/docs. These include user manuals and DRC rules for the GPDK library.

Do- Always close Virtuoso fully by selecting File-exit or using the red window X.

Don't- use capital letters in your library or cell view names. Always use all lower case letters. Using capital letters may cause Cadence to crash.

Don't- Allow the computer to time out while you are logged in. This will interrupt Virtuoso. You may lose your work and corrupt your installation files.

Don't- Start Virtuoso in your home directory. Always move to the specific directory for the library you are using. For all of the labs you will be using the same library.

Q1: (IcLic-23) License Virtuoso_Schemetic_Editor_L (“95100”) is not available to run Schematics-L.

A 1: Use Virtuoso_Schematic_Editor_XL (“95115”) instead. Any version of Schematic Editor will work for all labs.

Q3: When I create a pin for Vdd and Gnd in Layout view I get LVS or DRC errors?

QA3: When you place an instance of Vdd or Gnd the actual full name of these devices are Vdd! and Gnd! When you create pins in layout view the names must match, so just use the exclamation point !

Q4: Where did the technology libraries go?

A4: If, when you start up Virtuoso, you no longer have any technology libraries showing in the Library Manager, try this first.

Log into a windows machine but do not yet log into the Linux machine through Putty. Find and delete the file .dfshack . Then log into the Linux machine and start Virtuoso.

Your libraries should now be there.

Q5: Use X-ming instead of X-win on your own PC, character display error?

A5: The default install package for X-ming does not come with a proper font package. Download X-ming_fonts.zip file, install this in the XMING directory. (Thanks Girogi for providing the procedure)

Procedure: 1) Locate where your XMING is installed, e.g. "C:\Program Files (x86)\xming\" 2) Create a directory called "fonts" 3) Extract all the folders within this archive into the XMING fonts directory 4) Launch xming and use as usual.

Q6 :How to Fix Locked Cellviews-

A6: If you try to open an old file and Cadence says you can’t edit the file, it is because this file has become “locked”. This usually happens as a result of Cadence crashing while the file was open.

To unlock the file, you need to search for and remove (using the rm command) a file that ends in “.cdslck”.

You will often have to look through directories and sub-directories to find this file, but look at files and directories with the same name as the problematic file.

This command can be used to locate all the lock files:

find . –name "*.cdslck"

Just run it from your /SDRIVE/gpdk directory and it will search all the directories from there down.

Then use the rm command to delete each of the files found in the search.

Common Linux comands-

cd- change directory, example "cd SDRIVE"

cd ~ returns to your home directory

mkdir- make a new directory, example "mkdire gpdk"

ls- list all the files and sub-directories in the current directory

rm- delete a specified file