open-source-silicon.dev

Hi <@U016EM8L91B>, when I use the command "savenetlist" command, it doesn't seem to save the current netlist or create a new one (If i'm using a netlist name that doesn't have a file). When I use the "writeall" command, it only saves the .mag file. I am working on the Magic Tutorial #7 and tut7b (copied to my own home directory).  Are there any other commands I should use to save/write to the netlist?

`extract all`
`ext2spice lvs`
`ext2spice`
These commands write an LVS spice netlist (without parasitic Rs and Cs)

<@U029P6JGBT4> sorry, I forgot to specify. The netlist we use in the menu "specialopen netlist" for routing purposes? It ends in .net instead of .spice

<@U022VJ35KUJ>:  The "netlist" feature of magic is a "second-class citizen" that can get broken without me knowing about it for a long time.  Magic's internal router is not very good, and generally I do not recommend it, especially as Openlane can do top-level or between-macro routing for large digital designs, and neither Openlane nor magic does analog signal routing well, which should be done by hand.  The better approach in magic is to use the interactive route tool (hit "space" bar to go from the box tool to the wiring tool;  hit it more times to cycle back to the box tool).

<@U022VJ35KUJ>:  To properly answer your question, though, the "savenetlist" command is a command that is only registered for use in the netlist window.  With the cursor inside the netlist window, if you type ":" like you do in the layout window, you get command entry redirected to the console.  But there is a difference in what commands are available depending on whether you type ":" in a layout window or in a different window like the netlist window.  But if that doesn't work, then it is most likely that something changed in the command interface that breaks the usage described in tutorial 7, and I'll need to run through the tutorial myself to see what happened.

<@U016EM8L91B> Thanks for the clarification! So for analog designs, I should route using the wiring tool? Do I need to specify labels in the netlist window or the command "label" is sufficient?

I'm not making a recommendation per se, but that's what I do, when there are a relatively small number of connections to be made, and I want to have control over the wire widths, layers, shielding, etc., as is normally the case for analog designs.  Putting a label on a route with the "label" command is sufficient to name the net so that it is recognized by extraction and will show up with that name in the resulting netlist.

Sorry for all the follow-up, but as a last question; labeling the Locali layer that is next to the contact is sufficient? for example, for the nfet gate, there is already a poly to locali contact with a small section of locali material, and I would label the locali piece there as gate?