Cadence Schematic Aesthetics Tutorial

James Skelly

 

Cadence schematic software defaults to a black background, light blue wires, and light green components that, when printed, are both a waste of ink, and aesthetically difficult to interpret. This tutorial will cover how to quickly and easily change the default color and thickness of wires and components in Cadence schematics, and how to print or snip schematics with a white background.

 

 

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/edgH0OZH9Ooo8vUWT6MunC9cBueOsHXTscyGp7LxRdVvRurEG8IXyXt9RXSlird9_uhmkbwhbGtvi5oC5TohAl0E4XGcdIuODNNJOoAKjicBQ_wZ-3hEnrU53m7QIjXozPjW1EI

 

 

 

Here, we observe a simple voltage divider schematic, generated with Cadence schematic software (spectre). If we needed to print this out right now for an assignment or for any other purpose, copious amounts of black ink would be wasted on the background, and the lighter colors of the components and wires would not show up on a black or a white background very well. Thankfully, there is a solution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We will first discuss how to change the color and thickness of the components and wires.

Bring up the CIW (Command Interpreter Window) and click on Tools » Display Resource Manager

 

 

A small window will pop up called the Display Resources Tool Box window. Click Edit.

 

 

The Display Resource Editor window will pop up, shown below. Be sure to switch the Layers selector to All.

 

 

We can now navigate through the various items that Cadence has default colors for. We are specifically interested in “device drawing1” (for editing the color of schematic components), “wire drawing”, and “wire label”. The process for changing the color and thickness for each individual item is always the same, so we will just go through the process for the color and thickness of the wire. The first thing we will do is select “wire drawing” in the scroll menu on the left.

 

 

We can see that the defaults for the fill color and outline color of the wire are light blue. We can also see that the default thickness is not very thick at all.

We can now select a new wire color and thickness. In the tutorial, we will select dark blue, and medium line thickness (mline). Be sure to hit Apply.

 

 

Once you have hit Apply, go to File » Save.

When the Save Display Resource File window pops up, under Files, click display.drf.

Click OK.

A pop up will ask you if you would like to overwrite the display file. Click Yes.

 

 

Be sure to close and reopen whatever schematic you were working on in order to activate the change in color and thickness.

 

Repeat this process for “wire label” and “device drawing1” to thicken and change colors of components and wire names.

The components have been thickened and changed to a pink color.

The new schematic will look like the following.

 

 

Now that the schematic is darker and thicker, we can be sure it will show up better on a white background.

This part of the tutorial will cover how to pull up the schematic with a white background for printing purposes.

 

We first need to use the Zoom command (Z) to crop the schematic view to exactly what we want our snip to look like.

In the photo above, this is already done.

 

Next, go to File » Export Image, and the Export Image window will pop up, seen below.

 

 

Select Background and change the background color to white. Click OK, circled below.

 

       

 

Next, we need to name the file, seen below (you do not need to add .png to the file name, the software will do that on its own as long as you set the file type to PNG). After naming the file, select Save to File.

 

        

 

At this point, we are pretty much done. We need to simply navigate back to the MobaXTerm to find the file.

Open up the MobaXTerm and navigate to the CMOSedu directory (you may have to hit the green refresh button in order for the file to pop up in the CMOSedu directory). Down below your libraries you will find your .png file, which is now an image of the schematic with a white background, that can be snipped, or copied and pasted into a file to be printed.

 

              

 

This is the end of the tutorial. Hopefully it will save you lots of ink and frustration!

 

 

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