Analog Environment and cdsSpice Variable Name length limitations

Hi all,

I just spent about 2 hours debugging and figuring out why a simple
voltage pulse source didn't output the waveform I wanted.

Only to find out it was because of a arcane and in my opinion stupid
limitation in the software: variable names must be <= 8 characters,
otherwise variable names will be truncated and improperly recognized!!

for example:

write_en_period
and
write_en_pulsew

truncates to:

write_en_p
and
write_en_p

Thus messing up my objects! (in this cae, a voltage pulse source).[

Does anybody know the way around this problem?

This is important because I plan to have my entire project (a
microprocessor) in schematic hierarchy, using variable names to
parametrize transistor widths. But I cannot have easy to read variable
names if they must all be truncated to 8 characters!

Thanks,
circuit student

 

I'm not aware of such a limitation. What simulator interface are you using?

The user interface (because it is not stretchable) doesn't help visualising the
difference between the variables (this is fixed in IC610, due end of October),
but I don't believe ADE will truncate any design variables. Perhaps a particular
simulator you're using does that?

Anyway, give some more details please...

Regards,

Andrew.

 

I faintly remember this being a problem with spectreS, when we were
using IC446. But then, I haven't tried long variable names recently.

Satya