Accessing Mentor Graphics in the
College of Engineering

The College of Engineering participates in the Mentor Graphics Worldwide Higher Education Program established to train electrical engineering students in the use of industry standard EDA tools.

The Mentor Graphics C.4 application software is available to electrical engineering students on vlsi.sdsu.edu. Students can access the application tool suite on any of the Hewlett-Packard and Sun Workstations located in rooms E-207, E-217, and E-220. Those who wish to run Design Architect and ICstation remotely from a Sun, Hewlett-Packard, Linux, or Windows 98/NT workstation must download and install the Mentor Graphics font set prior to starting and of the Falcon Framework applications such as Design Architect or IC Station.

Instructions for installing the Mentor Graphics C.4 fonts under Exceed v5.x

These instructions were originally written by Stephen Blair of Mentor Graphics support services. Copyright 1999 Mentor Graphics Corporation.

First, Download the Mentor Graphics C.4 and Minc PLDesigner-XL font distribution with MSDOS file name limitations(768KB) to your PC and store the ZIP file in the Exceed font directory, say C:\win32app\exceed\font\ if you installed Exceed in the C: partition.

Next, unzip the distribution using PKZIP for Windows. A directory named MGCMINC should have been created after PKZIP inflates the ZIP distribution which contains all the Mentor Graphics and MINC fonts in Bitmap Distribution Format (BDF).

Invoke the Xconfig application and double click the Font icon:

The Xconfig interfaceThe Xconfig font utility

From the font interface, select Compile Fonts... and navigate the file selection dialog to the MGCMINC directory where the BDF files were created. A list of all the BDF files should appear in the left most scrollable window as shown in the following image:

The Compile Fonts... file selection dialog

Select all the BDF files by clicking the Select All button and then click the Compile button:

Selecting and compiling all BDF files

When the BDF files are being compiled, a status window similar to the following will be displayed:

Compilation status window

Click the Done button when compilation is complete and then click the Yes button when you are asked if you would like to add the newly compiled fonts to the Exceed font database:

Adding the new fonts to the Exceed font database

Next, define a filename to hold the font database for the newly compiled fonts. The recommended filename is mgc.fdb so enter mgc in the Add Font Directory text entry box:

Defining the font database filename

Once you have specified a name for the font database filename, click the Done button and you should receive the following confirmation dialog informing you that the directory containing the Mentor Graphics BDF fonts have been added to the font database:

Clicking the Ok button will return you to the Compile Fonts file selection dialog in which you should click the Close button which should, in turn, bring you back to the Font Settings dialog. Close the Font Settings dialog and you should return to the Xconfig interface.

Finally, start the Exceed X-server and telnet or secure shell to jason.sdsu.edu and type the following command in a shell: 

1 [jason]/home/user> xset fp default
2 [jason]/home/user> xset fp rehash

You should now be able to invoke Design Manager to access the Falcon Framework tool suite: 

3 [jason]/home/user> dmgr &

Instructions for installing the Mentor Graphics C.4 fonts in the Un*x environment

  1. Download the font distribution to your workstation

  2. Uncompress the tar archive 

    % uncompress mgc_fonts_b4.tar.Z

  3. Extract the tar archive 

    % tar xf mgc_fonts_b4.tar

  4. Add the newly created mgc_fonts_b4 directory to your font path 

    % xset +fp <complete path to the new mgc_fonts_b4 directory>

  5. Rehash your font search path 

    % xset fp rehash