About Translating Mentor Graphics Libraries

Agilent Technologies and Mentor Graphics Corporation both offer powerful EDA design tools. Many of today's design engineers prefer to use a combination of these tools to take advantage of the strengths of both design environments. Because of this desire to use multiple tools, Agilent Technologies has developed the Intermediate File Format translators as a method for transferring designs between the Advanced Design System (ADS) and Mentor Graphics environments.

Intermediate File Format (IFF) is an ASCII file format that is both platform and application independent. The file has a simple, line-oriented command structure with a fairly rich set of constructs, thus simplifying design transfer. The IFF translators offered by Agilent Technologies provide a means for transferring IFF files between Advanced Design System and third-party electronic design automation (EDA) tools such as Boardstation from Mentor Graphics Corporation.

Advanced Design System

Advanced Design System has been developed specifically to simulate the entire communications signal path. This unique solution integrates the widest variety of proven RF, DSP, and electromagnetic design tools into a single, flexible environment. Building on years of expertise developing new technologies for our EDA tools, Advanced Design System provides a broad range of high-performance capability. This makes it easy to explore design ideas, then model the electrical and physical design of the best candidates.

Boardstation

Boardstation from Mentor Graphics Corporation is an integrated environment for generating PC boards. Boardstation contains both a schematic tool (Design Architect), and a physical layout tool. The IFF interface to Boardstation will specifically only work with Library Management System (LMS) libraries, and the special library that is provided with Mentor Graphics' RF Architect product. RF Architect is a special add-on to the Boardstation environment, that allows the standard ADS palette of components to be used within Mentor Graphics. Additionally, it allows the user to create parameterized layout instances, which is a requirement when generating transmission line components in a PC Board environment.

The IFF Translator

The IFF translator provided by Agilent Technologies is an EDA framework integration software product that stores circuit component and connectivity information. This product enables you to exchange design information between ADS and other EDA frameworks that provide an IFF interface. Agilent's IFF interface enables you to generate IFF files from ADS schematic information as well as receive IFF files from other design environments that support IFF translation. Mentor Graphics has also created an IFF translator for use with Boardstation. The combination of these two translators enables you to share schematics between the two EDA design tools.

IFF Interface Major Benefits

The IFF interface enables you to translate schematic information between Advanced Design System and the Mentor Graphics design environment resulting in the following benefits:

• Avoids re-entry of designs
• Helps eliminate the possibility of errors in design re-entry
• Time savings

IFF Interface Major Features

Key features of the IFF Interface enable you to perform the following:

• Import IFF files into ADS from Boardstation and vice versa
• Export IFF files from ADS to Boardstation and vice versa
• Preserve circuit component and connectivity information during transfer

Intended Audience

The audience intended for this manual consists of CAD system administrators and CAD librarians who want to make their Mentor Graphics LMS libraries available for use in Advanced Design System. It is assumed that the users have some knowledge of both Advanced Design System and Mentor Graphics Boardstation. It is also assumed that the users have some knowledge about component modeling and simulation.

Main Requirements

To enable the successful IFF translation of an RF Board design between ADS and Mentor Graphics Boardstation, you must ensure that the following requirements are met:

• The link between IFF and the Mentor Graphics design environment is available and installed. The IFF translator for Mentor Graphics is a part of RF Architect.
• The component libraries used for creating the schematic in ADS and Design Architect have been implemented to support translation via IFF. This manual will provide detailed information on library requirements. If equivalent libraries have not been set up for Mentor Graphics components in ADS, the Mentor Graphics components will not be usable in simulations.

  Note Agilent Technologies supports the IFF Import and Export tools for ADS. Mentor Graphics is responsible for the RF Architect product, which includes ADS equivalent part libraries, as well as IFF Import and IFF export. ADS and Mentor Graphics IFF products are licensed separately. Contact Mentor Graphics for information on IFF translation tools for Boardstation.

What's in this Manual

The goal of this manual is to help you get started, providing relevant examples that teach you how to set up and use the software, and showing you where you can get more information as you need it. This manual contains the following:

• Overview of Library Translation describes the overall process of how to move a Mentor Graphics LMS library into ADS.
• Setting Up Your Environment describes the shell variables and configuration file variables that must be set up to support library translation from Boardstation to ADS.
• Exporting Library Parts from Mentor Graphics describes the procedure for exporting Mentor Graphics LMS parts from LMS Librarian to IFF files.
• Adding Simulation Setups to an IFF File describes how to use the Agilent Technologies Library Translator program to process the Mentor Graphics IFF files so that, after an IFF import, the symbols will have the proper simulation settings for use with Advanced Design System's simulator.
• Importing Library Parts from Mentor Graphics into ADS describes the special LMS toolkit IFF import and the special setups for LMS component definitions.
• Setting Up Components for Simulation in ADS describes the procedure for setting up a component in ADS for use with the ADS simulator. This covers using the Library Translator from ADS, creating RF subcircuit definitions, and how to create special formsets for use with discrete yield and optimization.
• Verifying a Library describes recommended procedures for verifying component simulation in ADS, and recommended procedures for verifying layout generation.

About ADS Design Kits

Once your Mentor Graphics library has been translated into Advanced Design System, the last step in the process is to modify your library so that it will function in a redistributable format that is file system independent. Agilent Technologies provides the tools for creating distributable ADS libraries referred to as ADS Design Kits . Even though design kit creation is a necessary step in the process, the creation, installation, and usage of ADS Design Kits is beyond the scope of this manual.
For more information on converting your library into an ADS Design Kit, refer to your ADS Design Kit documentation or consult your Agilent Technologies sales representative.