Hi,
while looking at node currents in my circuits I found that there sometimes appear a nomenclature like this:
component_name:pin_name
toghether with the more classic:
/component_name/pin_name
Here "pin_name" is used in a lousy fashion, actually in the case of slash separated (with a slash at the very beginning) nomenclature, the pin_name is that actually derivable from the schematic canvas info.
In the case of the Colon-separated type nomenclature, I am not entirely sure where the names identifying the nodes are taken from, so any pointers to specific manual sections would be appreciated
Anyhow, what I furthermore observed is that this nomenclature changed between Explorer and Assembler of the same circuit. This of course threw out a lot of my expressions which are now invalid as the node info is stored in the other type of nomenclature.
A few snapshots to clarify what I'm talking about:
This is from Assembler and the Iprobe currents are now in the slash-separated form:
You can see that for the transistor N0 a mixture of the two coexist. Interestingly enough, not all the nodes I requested to save are available
(side note: to save all nodes, I have to plunge into the Explorer view of the specific test and act from there - I could not find the same option from the Assembler surface or any RMB menu)
As said, this is of course very confusing and I would like to learn more about the two different nomenclatures, why are they there and what is used for what.
The part where it gets crazy is that if I now open saved results I did before using Assembler, i.e. using only Explorer, even those results from the browser have the slash-separated nomenclature!!!!
But I swear I am not crazy, they were with the other colon-separated nomenclature as I created the outputs!!
So, in summary:
- I created a bunch of output expressions using some data in the colon-separated format, while using Explorer. These were created by "send to calculator" or similar and worked absolutely fine.
- I then needed to add another test to the suite, so I clicked the up-arrow and went to Assembler
- After simulation, all of a sudden a bunch of results were giving error.
- Upon debugging, I realized that a current like IB:in (that's current probe "IB", node "in", which I don't know where it's gotten its name from btw) was no longer available.
- In its place, now current "/IB/PLUS" was present
- Moreover, the colon-separated nomenclature for the probes disappeared from the old "Explorer-only simulated" results, as viewable from the Browser
- The psf database still contains a mixture of the two, for the transistor device
Can you explain a bit what the cause of the phenomenon is, and possibly how to avoid it? In the end of the day, I need to change a lot of expressions now.
Regards,
Michele
EDIT:
I'm beginning to question my sanity. I have created a new schematic with the same content as the one object of this topic, then just created an Explorer view, and the results Browser is showing the probe currents in the "classic" way.
So I am wondering how come I input them with that other nomenclature? I certainly have not invented that. But I can't reproduce the behaviour now :-(