Playing with Mentor Graphics
The new tutorial will be posted shortly.
Here are the some ancient introductory tutorials and lab assignments from ECE 303 as a refresher for students
who aren't familiar with Mentor Graphics:
The files are in postscript format, so you can view them with
ghostview (gv). Download the files to your account.
- How do I make custom symbols?
After making a piece of logic, you can create a custom symbol for further use rather than having to copy and paste each component over and over again. To create a new symbol, first select the "schematic" option under the "Check" menu. Then go to the "Miscellaneous" menu and select "Generate Symbol..."
- How do I create and use buses?
A bus are simply a bundle of wires. On the screen in Design Architect, they are represented by what look like fat wires and are named with the convention busname(31:0). There are a couple ways to rip individual wires off of a bus. One is to use the "rip" components in the library. The other way is to just attach a wire to bus. Either way, you should be sure to specify which wire on the bus you're trying to rip.
- Can I rip buses to/from buses?
Yes! There are probably a couple ways of doing it, but here's one. rip the bus a with a regular wire, and enter an array for the index instead of single digit. Though it looks like a wire, it really does keep all the lines you ripped off the bus. At this point you may want to play with the drawn properties of the wire to make it thicker to look like a bus. The only tricky part to be aware of is that if you're ripping a bus from one bus, and it actually changes nets, the bus will have to go through some sort of gen_lib component like at the very least, a ripper component. Here is an example.
- How do dofiles work?
Dofiles are quite simple. The key is to pay attention to the xterms that are started when you open up quicksim. Comments are preceded by "//", and commands typically start with $ signs. Just copy the appropriate commands in to a text file. To run a dofile, bring quicksim to to the fore front and type "dofile filename". You may need to add a relative pathname to the filename.
- Can I run Mentor remotely from another computer?
Yes, see this link for help setting up Mentor Graphics fonts for an Xserver
- What the heck is the middle button good for?
Lot's of things, actually in Mentor Graphics. A full list of mouse gestures can be found under Design Architect's Help->On Strokes... menu. Here's a brief table of helpful mouse gestures in Design Architect.
| \ (top to bottom) | Zoom in to diagonal area |
| \ (bottom to top) | Zoom to fit all |
| / (top to bottom) | Zoom in |
| / (bottom to top) | Zoom out |
- Mice suck, what are the Mentor Graphics Key commands?
The table along the bottom of the Design Architect window is a context-based list of commands. Each box is tied to a function key, and the position of the command indicates what modifier key to use (shift, control, or alt).
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