Each cell has a view, which provides a description of its contents. A view consists of a full name and an abbreviation to be used in cell naming. For example, the "layout" view is abbreviated "lay" and so the layout view of cell "adder" is called "adder{lay}." When no view name appears, the cell has the "unknown" view. Possible views are:

- "layout" (for IC layout)
- "schematic" (for logic designs)
- "icon" (to describe a cell symbolically)
- "layout.skeleton" (a minimal view)
- "documentation" (a text-only view)
- "VHDL" or "Verilog" (text-only views for hardware-description languages)
- a number of "netlist" views (text-only views that list connectivity for various tools such as "netlisp", "als", "quisc", "rsim", and "silos")
- "unknown" (no specified view)

When creating a cell with the New Cell... command, you can specify its view. After creation, you can change the current cell's view with the Change Cell's View... command (in menu View). You can also use context menus in the cell explorer to change a cell's view. Note that this is one of the few commands in Electric that is NOT undoable. |