How to: Enable Waveform Dumping

DSim supports Metrics eXentsible Dump (.mxd) waveform dump to a file. When you want to dump waveforms during your simulation, the following compile-time and run-time switches need to be enabled.

At compile-time, add the +acc+b switch to give support to waveform dumping. At run-time, add the -waves switch with the waveform file name. For example:

mdc dsim -a '-genimage image +acc+b -f filelist.f ...'
mdc dsim -a '-image image -waves wavefile.mxd ...'

Or, combining both compile and run-time commands:

mdc dsim -a '+acc+b -f filelist.f ... -waves wavefile.mxd ...'

This will generate the waveform file in the MXD format, and the waveform can be viewed on the remote without downloading the file, with

mdc view wave wavefile.mxd

You can check how large the MXD file is with mdc ls, and look for wavefile.mxd. This will list the files and their sizes, in bytes, under the current remote folder. If you want to reduce the waveform file size, use a scope file.

Use a scope file

You can select just a subset of signals for DSim to dump out the information to the waveform. This can greatly reduce the size of the waveform file since not all the information is dumped to it, which is the default. You select a subset of signals by using a scope file.

To use a scope file, use -wave-scope-specs <scope_file> in your DSim Cloud CLI commands. The syntax of the scope file can be found in User Guide: DSim Setting Options by Scope Using Specification File.

This method decreases simulation runtime and waveform file size, but requires you to know the hierarchy of your signals.