PCell guiding shapes are 'active' even when hidden

edited March 2015 in General

Hi,

Guiding shapes layer is AWESOME and I use it for many things. I've never seen that in other tools.

However, there is one problem.

I often want to select all cells that contain a specific layer (a regular, non-guiding-shape layer). Call it "layer 1". So what I do is show only Layer 1, then choose Select All or else drag a selection box around some area. Only those cells that contain layer "1" somewhere in their descendents are selected. Great!

However if there is a guiding shape, that cell is also selected, even if it contains no layer "1". I have tried deselecting "Show guiding shapes" in File > Setup > Display > Cells, and they do indeed disappear from visibility, but cells containing it are still selectable.

Hopefully that made sense. Basically I'm hoping there is a way to truly hide guiding shapes layer, the same way you hide a regular layer, so that cells containing it are no longer selectable.

Is this possible?

Thanks,

David

Comments

  • edited November -1

    Hi David,

    I like this feature too. And recently Cadence appears to have added something similar as well :-)

    I can reproduce the issue. I consider that a bug - what is invisible should not be selectable.

    Thanks for mentioning this.

    Matthias

  • edited November -1
    Thanks for reproducing the issue.

    In a similar vein to "what is invisible should not be selectable" -- I also notice that cells are always selectable with "partial" command, which I don't think is the desired behavior.

    Steps to reproduce the issue:

    1. Create a cell called CHILD, with some shapes in (boxes or whatever) on any layer *except* don't use Layer 1.
    2. Instance that cell in a TOP cell.
    3. Draw a wire in the TOP cell, on layer 1.
    4. Hide all layers except layer 1. The child cell disappears since it doesn't have any layer 1 in it.
    5. With "Select top level objects" enabled, use Select tool to drag to select the wire and cell. Indeed, as expected, only the wire is selectable. No problem here.
    6. With "Select top level objects" enabled, use Partial tool to drag to select a vertex on the wire. If your dragged selection box encompasses the hidden cell, the entire cell seems to be selected also. Moving the selected vertex translates the cell also.

    Should partial tool (step 6) instead behave like step 5? Or is there another reason for the behavior?

    Thanks,
    David
  • edited November -1

    Hi David,

    You're right. I am more surprised that the same issue does not occur in normal mode. Apparently I was coding smarter there ...

    Thanks,

    Matthias

  • edited June 2015
    Hi Matthias,

    Just tried 0.23.11 and notice that the latter issue above (cells are always selectable when using partial tool) is still the same. Is this something you planned to patch in 0.24?

    (I know you already have a long to-do list for 0.24; just mentioning it in case you intended to include it in 0.23.11 but forgot, in which case it might not be slated for 0.24 either.)

    Thanks,
    David
  • edited November -1

    Hi David,

    I'm a bit confused .. the second issue should be fixed. I'll have to check whether I forgot to merge that fix into the 0.23 branch ...

    But the first issue (guiding shape can be selected even if hidden) I was a bit reluctant to fix, since for some PCells (like rounded polygons) it's essential to be able to modify the guiding shapes. Completely disabling them was a bit too much I felt. People might like to hide the guiding shapes but not being able to modify them is a different thing.

    Matthias

  • edited June 2015

    Regarding the second issue - Right, my apologies. I was confused, it is fixed. A huge thanks!

    Regarding the first issue - perhaps I didn't explain properly. I fully agree that "for some PCells (like rounded polygons) it's essential to be able to modify the guiding shapes," and I use that feature a lot. (Fantastic idea by the way!)

    However I'm not talking about "Completely disabling them..." -- I'm talking about making them not selectable when they are hidden. "Hidden" meaning to deselect: File > Setup > Display > Cells > Show PCell guiding shapes. The PCell handle can still be dragged around when it is not hidden. Maybe a different explanation is as follows:

    Steps to reproduce the issue:

    1. Place a Basic.CIRCLE in layer 1
    2. Show entire hierarchy
    3. Hide layer 1
    4. Hide PCell guiding shapes, by deselecting File > Setup > Display > Cells > Show PCell guiding shapes.
    5. Now nothing is visible on the layout.
    6. Now, drag a selection box around where the cell is, and you will find you can still select it.

    Where does this issue rear its head? Well for example if you have some shapes using layer 2, that are drawn in the vicinity of the above circle in layer 1, then let's say you want to select these layer 2 shapes only but nothing else. So usually you'd just hide layer 1 and drag a box to select all the layer 2 shapes. But, in its current implementation, the PCell will also be selected even when it is completely invisible. Does that make sense?

  • edited November -1

    Hi David,

    I think I understand your point now.

    Thanks for the explanation. I'll have a look how that can be changed.

    Matthias

  • edited November -1

    Matthias,

    Sorry to keep beating a dead horse :-) But I think I found another instance of "what should not be selectable" that I wanted to report.

    Steps to reproduce the problem:

    1. Open KL 0.24-python-eval on Win 8.1
    2. New layout named "TOP"
    3. New cell named "CHILD", instanced at least once in TOP
    4. Draw some shapes on layer 1 in CHILD. Draw some more shapes on layer 1 in TOP.
    5. Enable Select Top Level Objects.
    6. Right click layer 1 > Make invalid. Now as expected, you cannot select the shapes in TOP. This is as expected.
    7. But, you can drag a box around the CHILD cell instances and thereby select the CHILD cell. Even though the only thing inside it is an invalid layer. I don't think this is the desired behavior. What is invalid should not be selectable.

    When does this issue appear? -- When you have shapes in layers 1 and 2, and am trying to drag to select shapes on layer 2 but don't want to select shapes on 1. (You could just hide the shapes on 1, but sometimes you want to see where they are while working on layer 2 -- therefore I would usually set layer 1 to Invalid and just work on layer 2. But then undesired cells get selected.)

    Thanks,
    David

  • edited November -1

    Hi David,

    yes, you're right. I have fixed it for 0.24 already. Tonight there will be a new snapshot with this fix and the others you have mentioned in the other discussions.

    Thanks again,

    Matthias

  • edited November -1

    Hello Matthias,

    I notice that the GUIDING_SHAPES layer is always black, and doesn't show up in the Layers palette. Is there any way to add it there, so we can toggle visibility, select-ability, color, stippled, etc?

  • edited November -1

    Hi Lukas,

    the guiding shapes are actually shown as part of the cell boundary and appear in the same color than the boundaries. You can configure their appearance on the "Display/Cells" page in the setup dialog (File/Setup). "Auto" color should be the one which always works.

    BTW: I noticed a little flaw there: when you disable "Show cell boxes" but enabled "Show PCell guiding shapes", you cannot configure the color, although it's used ...

    Best regards,

    Matthias

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