CSCE 491 - Homework Assignment Submission Guidelines
The design modeling assignments have specific guidelines that I am asking all of you to follow in regards to what you need to turn in for the assignments. Here's what I need you to provide when you submit an assignment. This is the same, whether you are doing the assignment alone or as part of your project team. (This seems like a lot of crap to do, but once you do it, it is really easy to keep track of it, as all assignments require the same stuff.)
1. Design Effort Worksheet: This is a worksheet where I am asking you to keep track of the amount of time that you are working on the various activities of the design, whether it is a homework assignment or project design activities. Here is the worksheet, in both PDF form and MS-Word form (we use this template also in CSCE 611). You can print it and write the time (in hours) by hand, or use the Word version and type it in for email purposes.
I don't use this information in grading, but I do count off if you don't turn it in properly. I am asking you to keep the information, because we are doing a research study on design productivity and effort distribution. By keeping track of this data, we are hoping to measure how well these techniques help in the design process. You're therefore helping us in our research efforts.
2. Printouts of the Nimbus ASM design: This includes the canvas sheets, Bus Table signal definitions, and Memory Array definition (if you use one).
2.1 You go into the File -> Print -> Setup dialog box.
2.2 Select "Other Scale" and enter "90", which will reduce the output to 90%. (Sometimes if you draw ASM symbols near the bottom of the sheet, it gets cutoff on the printout, unless you reduce the scale so that everything fits on the sheet. It's an annoyance, and this is a way to insure that all the design is visible. If you can't see everything when you print out, then do it again, first reducing it to 85%.)
2.3 Click the "OK" button.
2.4 Make sure you enter the design information, as follows: Go to Options -> Design -> Information... in the pulldown menu. This brings up a dialog box.
2.4.1 For Design Name, type in the "HW_n" where n is the number of the homework assignment. (Note: the Design Name entered can't have any characters other than alphanumeric and the underbar, "_" character.)
2.4.2 For Description, type in a design description, for instance, "Up/Down Counter".
2.4.3 Next, in the Name field, specify your name (if you are submitting your work) or your project team's name or team number (in the case where your team is submitting).
2.4.4 Then, specify the Date (any format),
2.4.5 and then the Version (in the case where you are submitting a different version of the design model which, sometimes, I'll ask you to do so).
2.5 For selecting what parts of the design model to print, go to File -> Print -> Output pulldown menu. The option to print the current sheet prints just that--whichever sheet is visible in the Main Canvas window. So, you would need to print Entire Workspace to get all of the sheets and the Bus Table (with the inventory of all your signals). It will send the job to the printer in 1D39 or 1D43, depending on which printer you entered when you set up Nimbus.
2.6 Note: if you have a model where you have Memory Arrays defined, this option prints out all the contents of the memory arrays as well--meaning your printout will be lots of sheets! So, you may want o Print To File, then open this .prn file up in Ghostview (which you can run on the Solaris machines by typing in the 'gv' command.)
3. Test Planning Worksheet: This worksheet is used in coming up with a test plan for your modeling and verification. As I stated in classes, more time, effort and energy generally goes into defining and carrying out tests than in the actual design activity itself. Good test design is as important as good design of the model. This worksheet is here, available in PDF form, to print out and hand-write in the information, or in MS-Word form, if you want to type it in online.
4. Printouts of the Simulation Waveform: If you have run a simulation, you will need to print out some portion, or all, of this simulation result. If the simulation run is of any length, or if your design has lots of signals and buses in it, then the number of pages in your printout could be quite large. I don't want a bunch of paper to wade through, so I'd like you to follow these instructions.
4.1 Open the Wave Viewer, using the "eye" icon in the toolbar in the main Nimbus window. There is a "page" icon in the toolbar for the Wave Viewer.
4.2 You can reduce the size of the waveform output, so that the printout takes up less pages. I prefer to print the waveforms in landscape mode. To set the landscape mode for the waveform printout, you have to go to the main print menu: File -> Print -> Setup and select "landscape".
4.2 You can specify the range of the simulation to be included in the printout. Open the Wave Viewer's Print dialog box by clicking on the "page" icon. The Interval Option is the first setting in this dialog box. If you are printing a portion of the waveform for documentation of a specific test case, then use this Interval Option to specify the range of interest. If you are printing out the entire waveform, then leave this alone.
4.4 To print in a reduced size on the sheet, select the number of sheets onto which you want to print the waveform. Consider how many signals are in your Bus Table, and displayed in the Wave Viewer. If there are lots, then you will need to print across two rows of sheets (particularly if you have selected to print in landscape format). Then you need to consider how long the simulation wave runs horizontally across pages. Alternately, you can play with the Scale Option, and get a scale that can be read but doesn't waste a bunch of paper to print. once you find a good setting, you'll want to use this setting again.
4.5 Now, print this waveform out, either directly to the printer, or to a file so that you can bring it up in GhostView. If you print out waveforms to show the results of a particular test case, you will need to draw and write on the waveform to show me where the specific data changes or control signals that show the design working as specified. Write on the waveforms.