Global Naming Conventions

Many CAD tools place restrictions on names, making it rather difficult to translate design data between tools. Over the years, experience has taught that there is a set of rules which allows designs to be used by the maximum number of different tools.  So, in order to make sure that your designs can be used by as many CAD tools as possible, make sure that any time you create any name at all, it adheres the these conventions.  This includes all libraries, cells, ports, pins, nets, instances, modules, parameters, properties, function names... ANYTHING.

1. Names must begin with a letter of the alphabet.
2. Names can contain letters, digits, and the underscore character "_". No other characters should be used.
3. Names must be treated as case-sensitive.
4. Names must be unique within their scope, even if a tool treats them as case-insensitive. For example, a library should not contain two cells named "adder12" and "Adder12".
5. Names must be 1 to 255 characters in length (preferably 5 or fewer characters).

Examples

maintained by Rhett Davis
wrdavis@eecs.berkeley.edu