Connection

Connection of instance ports is the main job of LinkFab, doing this job smartly and efficiently is the core value of this tool;

To achieve this target, LinkFab offers many convenient facilities to search, to filter, to match, to automate; User can use these facilities either from GUI or from commands.

Connect

Connection operation is mainly done in connection page of GUI mode, in interactive mode and batch mode, user can use command connect directly. Please refer to connect for command syntax;

Select menu: design->connection, or shortcut: CTRL-p, LinkFab will popup the connection page; As shown below:

This page is mainly divided into 2 parts: left & right; Left side is for drivers, and right side is for loads; And each side has 3 panes: hierarchy pane, instance ports pane, wiring-info pane; For drivers side, only driving ports are shown, and for loads side, only loading ports are shown, this is designed to reduce the unnecessary disturbance;

Select a driving module and some driving ports on the left, then select a loading module and some loading ports on the right, and press some shortcut keys can make connection between driving ports and loading ports:

Shortcut	Function	Comment
CTRL-w	Normal Connect	The width of driving ports and loading ports must be same
CTRL-v	Reverse Connect	Connect driving ports to a reversed sequence of loading ports
CTRL-t	1-to-many Connect	Connect one driver to multiple loads
CTRL-m	top-align Free Connect	No limitaion of port width, normal sequence, top-aligned
CTRL-M	bottom-align Free Connect	Similar with CTRL-m, but bottom-aligned
CTRL-n	top-align Blank Free Connect	Similar with CTRL-m, but only NONE state ports are connected
CTRL-N	bottom-align Blank Free Connect	Similar with CTRL-n, but bottom-aligned

Disconnect

To disconnect a port,

Tie

Tie connection operation can be done on input ports of leaf module and output ports of top-level shell module;