Chapter III: HIERARCHY

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9: Libraries

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A library is a collection of cells and facets that forms a consistent hierarchy. To enforce this consistency, Electric stores an entire library in one disk file that is read or written at one time. It is possible, however, to have multiple libraries in Electric. Only one library is the current one, and this affects commands that work at the library level.

A new library can be created with the New Library... command of the File menu. This new library will have no facets in it. When there are multiple libraries, you can switch between them with the Change Current Library... command.

To delete entire libraries, use the Close Library command of the File menu. This removes only the memory representation, not the disk file. Note that library changes are too vast to be tracked by the database-change mechanism and so are not undoable.

Reading Libraries

The Open Library... command of the File menu brings a new library into Electric from disk. These disk files are binary encoded representations of the Electric database.

Besides Electric libraries, it is possible to read circuit descriptions that are in other formats with the Import command of the File menu. Most of these commands place the data into a new library that has the same name as the disk file. When reading these files, it is important that the current technology be set to the one in the file so that proper layer conversion can be done (use the Change Current Technology... command of the Technology menu). These formats can be read:

See section 7-3 for more information on external formats.

Writing Libraries

Writing libraries to disk is done with the Save Library command of the File menu. If the library was read from disk, it is written back to the same file. If, however, you wish to write the library to a new file (thus preserving the original) then use the Save As... command.

Electric can also write external format files with the Export command of the File menu. These formats can be written:

See section 7-3 for more information on external formats.


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