Hi , 2 qs : 1. Lets say i have created ports in the subcell and instantiated in top level , is there any command to highlight the ports/now pins in the magic layout window ? 2. Any way to port the pins of the subcell to the top level - and may be uniquify them at same location and dimension ? Example /; in the subcell a , there are 2 ports created IN and OUT. I use 2 subcells , and when at top level , they are automatically created as IN_0 , IN1 , OUT0 , OUT1 at same location and same sizes Thanks

(1) Probably what you want is "select area labels", although there is no way to distinguish labels from ports with the "select" command (something else useful to add. . .) (2) You can select all the ports in the subcell with an area selection and do, say,

copy n 0

(copy north distance 0) which will then make a copy of them in the top level. Wholesale changing of label names would require some complicated Tcl command involving regular expressions. (2b) Another way to do this is to do a net selection (

select net

or just press the

s

key a few times), which changes each label to

<instance_name>/<label>

, which makes each label unique, although rather ungainly. Then do

select less area *

to remove everything but the labels, and do

copy n 0

to copy them to the top level. This satisfies the requirement, but probably you'll find that the resulting labels are too complicated and it's not worth the trouble.

@Tim Edwards - yes both options seems tough to do with. Let me rethink the layout and i will come back with suggestions