ECE171: Introduction to Digital Circuits

 Fall 1999

Rev: 9.25.99

MENTOR TOOLS TUTORIAL SESSION #1

Douglas V. Hall
Craig Files
Electrical Engineering Department
Portland State University
P.O Box 751
Portland OR, 97207
Version C2
September 1998

INTRODUCTION

This sequence of tutorials introduces the Mentor Graphics BOLD Browser which allows you to access manuals, Design Architect which is used for schematic capture, and QuicksimII which is used for simulating digital logic and microcomputer circuits. These are very powerful, state of the art tools so they have a great many features and options. The purpose of these tutorials is to introduce you to a set of basic features which will allow you to do a wide range of design projects, not to make you an expert on all the available features.

As you work through these tutorials, try to see the big picture and get an intuitive feel for how the tools work instead of getting lost in the details. For example, you should quickly see the generalization that the right mouse key is usually used to pop up a menu of commands and the left mouse key is used to select something such as an item from a list or to "push a button" in a menu. All the commands in a tool can be accessed through menus, so if you know what action you want to perform and how to bring up menus, with a little patience you can usually accomplish what you need to do.

At the conclusion of this session you should be able to:

 

  1. Bring up the Design Manager, and integrated environment which allows you to run all the available tools from one menu.
  2. Use the BOLD Browser to find and scan the Mentor manual for any tool
  3. Open and close windows, iconize and deiconize windows, use pop-up menus, and terminate a session.

WORKING WITH X-WINDOWS

If you have not worked with the X window environment before, look at the online document Introduction to the EE User Environment and Quick UNIX Introduction(CS/EE), then work your way through these on any of the machines in the FAB SUN lab.

USING addpkg TO LOAD MENTOR TOOLS

For ONLY the FIRST TIME you want to use the Mentor tools, you have to use the addpkg command to set up a path to the tools.

  1. At the Unix prompt, enter the addpkg command
  2. When the list appears, find mentorC.2, note the number to the left of it. and press the space bar to get to the end of the list.
  3. Enter the number for the mentorC.2 package and press the Return key.
  4. Logout and then Login again to put the addpkg into effect.

NOTES:

  1. EXAMPLE DISPLAY - if you click on this link it will bring up an example picture of the tutorial.

INVOKING THE DESIGN MANAGER

The first step in any design session is to bring up the Design Manager which allows you to access all the available tools from one integrated environment.

 

  1. After logging in and bringing up X windows, enter the following command at a command shell prompt, >:
  2. Now enter the command :

    EXAMPLE DISPLAY
    After what seems forever the Design Manager window will appear. The center section of the window shows an entry for each file in the your home directory. The right section of the window show icons for Navigator commands. The left side of the Design Manager window shows icons for some of the installed Mentor Graphics tools.
    EXAMPLE DISPLAY

  3. There are two ways to scroll through the list of tools. I call them the "stair" method and the "elevator" method.
    To step down through the list using the stair method you put the cursor on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the list and click the left mouse key. To move up though the list put the cursor on the up-pointing arrow to the right of the list and click the left mouse key. Note: If you hold the left mouse key down, the display will step through the list until you release the key.
    To move through the list using the elevator method, put the cursor on the rectangular box in the vertical column to the right of the list. Hold down the left mouse key and move the mouse up and down to scroll back and forth though the list.
    Experiment with these two methods and then stop with the bold_browser icon in the middle of the window. Note: The name for a tool is displayed below its icon.

USING THE BOLD BROWSER

If you need some feature not described in these basic tutorials, the manuals for all the Mentor tools are contained on a single CD ROM disk which you can access directly from your workstation with the BOLD Browser. This section shows you how to access the Mentor manuals. This section will also introduce you to some of the main techniques for working with the Mentor tool windows and menus.

 

  1. To run BOLD Browser move the cursor to the bold_browser icon in the tools window of the Design Manager window and click the left mouse key. This should highlight the icon.
  2. Move the cursor to an open area in the Tools window, then press and hold down the right mouse key. When the Tool Operations menu appears, move the cursor to the "Open" entry and release the mouse key. After a minute or so an options menu will pop up.
    EXAMPLE DISPLAY
  3. Read through the menu and look at the OK, Reset, and Cancel buttons along the bottom of the menu. Clicking the left mouse key with the cursor on the Cancel button will return you to the Tools menu. Clicking the left mouse key with the cursor on the Reset button will reset the menu to its default settings.
    Click the left mouse key on the OK button. After a minute or so the BOLD Browser window should appear. Note: If an error message appears, just click the left mouse key on the "Dismiss" button in the form.
  4. If the BOLD Browser window that appears does not show the Open Document window, put the cursor on the File entry at the top, then press and hold down the left mouse key. When the menu pops up, move the cursor down to Open, move the cursor right and down to Bookcase, then release the mouse key. After a short time the Open Document window should appear.
    EXAMPLE DISPLAY
  5. Use the scroll bar to the right of the window to Read through the list of available document categories, then scroll back until "Design Creation" is centered in the window.
  6. Select this category by moving the cursor to it and clicking the left mouse key. It should now be highlighted. Note: If you change your mind and want to look at some other document, you can just move the cursor to that entry and click on it. To see the list of documents in the Design Creation category, click on the OK button. The documents available in the category should now be listed under the the Design Creation heading.
  7. Scroll down through the Design Creation list until you see the Getting Started with Design Architect. Select this manual and click on the OK button. The title page of the requested document should then appear.
  8. To make reading documents easier, first enlarge the BOLD Browser window by putting the cursor on the lower RIGHT corner of the window, holding down the LEFT mouse key, and dragging the corner of the window down and to the right so the window fills the screen. Next, "maximize" the Getting Started with Design Architect window by putting the cursor in the larger of the two small boxes in the upper right corner and clicking the LEFT mouse button. To further improve the display, put the cursor in a blank area in the document, press the RIGHT mouse button to pop up the Document Area menu, move the cursor down to the Zoom entry and then right to the Paper Equivalent 100% line, then and release the mouse button.
    EXAMPLE DISPLAY
  9. There are two major ways to move through a document.
    1. You can flip pages by moving the cursor to a small symbol that looks like a page with one corner lifted(near the top right corner of the window) and click the left mouse key. After you move from the first page there will be two page symbols, one to flip forward a page and another to flip back a page.
    2. You can put the cursor in a blank area of the screen, use the right mouse key to pop up the Document Area menu and select Next Page, Previous Page, or Go To. The Go To entry has a sub-menu which allows you to go to a specific section or page number.
      Use one of these methods to get the Table of Contents displayed in the window.
  10. From the Table of Contents, you can get to a desired page in a document with one of the two methods above, or you can simply put the cursor on the title of the section you want to look at and click the left mouse key. The next section of this tutorial introduces you to a tool called Design Architect so to get an overview of this tool move the cursor to the Design Architect line in the Table of Contents and click the left mouse key.
    After you read the Design Architect Overview you can use the page-flip, staircase, or elevator method to scroll through some more of the document if you want.(Most of this has a high "fog index" so don't let it scare you.)
  11. To close the document when you finish, move the cursor to the small box in the upper LEFT corner of the Design Creation Quick Reference Window. Hold down the right mouse key and when the menu appears, move the cursor to the "close" line in the menu and release the mouse key.
  12. To leave BOLD Browser, move the cursor to the BOLD Browser banner at the very top of the BOLD Browser window, hold down the right mouse key, and when the menu appears, move the cursor to the "Quit" entry, and release the mouse key. This should bring you back to the Design Manager windows.
  13. Repeat steps 1-10 above to fix the process in your mind and to get ready for the next concepts. (You should have the Design Architect Overview page on the screen at this point.)
  14. Now, suppose that you want look at another document, but you also want to keep this page available so you can easily refer to it without digging through the manual to find it again. You can put the current page "in the background" as an icon which can be easily brought back as desired.
    Notice that in the upper right corner of the Getting Started with Design Architect next to the page flipper boxes there are two additional boxes. To create an icon for this document put the cursor in the box containing the smaller square and click the left mouse key. This should produce a text icon in the upper right corner of the BOLD Browser window.
    To restore the icon put the cursor on the icon, hold down the right mouse key, and when the menu appears, move the cursor to the Restore line and release the mouse key. Change the page back to an icon, then go on to the next step.
  15. To open another document, move the cursor to the File entry at the top of the BOLD Browser window then press and hold the right mouse key. When the File menu appears, move the cursor down to the Open line and then right and down to the Bookcase line. Release the left mouse key to select this option. The Open Document menu containing a list of all the document categories should appear again.
  16. Using the process described above, select and open the Design Creation list, find the Design Architect Reference Manual, and display the first page of its table of contents on the screen.
  17. Now, suppose you want to take another look at the overview. First move the cursor to the Getting Started with Design Architect icon in the upper right corner. Hold the right mouse key down and when the menu appears, move the cursor to the Restore line and release the mouse key. Experiment with iconizing and de-iconizing these two documents.
  18. When you are tired of playing with these icons bring the Getting Started with Design Architect Booklet page back on the screen. Close this document by putting the cursor in the box at the upper left corner of the window, holding down the right mouse key, moving to the Close entry and releasing the mouse key as before.
  19. Restore the Design Architect Reference Manual page to the screen as described before.
  20. If you want to keep BOLD Browser available while you run some other tool, you can iconize Bold Browser instead of just the current document. To try this, click the left mouse key on the small triangular button in the upper left corner of the BOLD Browser window. To restore the icon put the cursor on the icon, use the right mouse key to pop up a menu, select Restore and release the mouse key. Note: an alternative way to restore system window icons is to simply double-click the left mouse key on the icon.
  21. You have done enough for this session, so let's clean up, exit, and take a break.
    1. To close the Design Architect Reference Manual document, put the cursor on the box in the upper LEFT corner of its window, Use the right mouse key to pop up the menu, choose Close, and release the mouse button.
    2. To quit BOLD Browser, put the cursor in a blank section of the top banner, use the right mouse key to pop up the menu there, choose Quit, and release the mouse key.
    3. Close the BOLD Browser "orphan" shell window by moving your cursor into it, holding down the Control key, and pressing the c key.
    4. To quit Design Manager, put the cursor in a blank section of the top banner, use the right mouse key to pop up the menu there, select Quit, and release the mouse key.
      You should now be back at a UNIX prompt.