Cannot find switch master cell

I was trying to run PRFlatten on a cell, but the program showed:

Cannot find switch master cell for instance XY in cellView (ADD_B
schematic) from viewlist 'autoAbstract abstract schematic netlist' in
library Test01.

*Error* simFlattenWithArgs: abort netlist
si: Netlist did not complete successfully

What was the error message trying to tell me?

Ming

 

Ming,

It's trying to tell you that for instance XY in cellView ADD_B schematic, it
is trying to switch from whichever view is instantiated into one of the
views autoAbstract, abstract, schematic or netlist. However, whatever cell
it is that instance XY is, does not have one of these views.

Netlisting in DFII operates on this principle of view switching. Think of a
normal schematic based hierarchy - when a schematic is being processed, it is
full of symbols. For each symbol, you don't want to netlist the contents of
the symbol, but rather the corresponding schematic - so you need to switch
views from the symbol to the schematic. By controlling the view switch list,
you can then control which view gets picked, and the priority (or search
order) given to each.

This is further extended to have a stop list, so that once a view has
switched, it is checked to see if that view is in the stop list, and if so,
the hierarchy expansion stops at that point.

Config views (as created by the hierarchy editor) allow further control over
this netlisting procedure, as they then allow the rules to be changed on a
cell by cell, instance by instance, or (in some netlisters) occurrence by
occurrence basis.

Anyway, I elaborated a bit more than I perhaps needed to, but once you
understand the principles of how netlisting is done, the error message is very
clear.

Best Regards,

Andrew.

 

Thanks so much for your explanation.

Ming