CIW and Library Managaer window are the two most important windows of Cadence tools. CIW shows the log information; library manager helps you manage your designs which are generally organized in a number of cells. Every time when you start Cadence tools, you would always want to start a library manager from CIW as well.

When starting a design in Cadence, the first thing to do is to create a library where you can store your designs. Every Library is associated with a technology file and it is the technology file that supplies all the color maps, layer maps, design rules, extraction parameters required to view, design, simulate and fabricate your design. 
 

• Starting Library Manager

In CIW, click on Tools->Library Manager. The following window appears. 






• Create New Library

In Library Manager window, click on File->New ->Library.... You will see the following window. Enter the name of library (example shown: ELE462) where you expect to store your own designed cells. Attach this library to an existing technology (example shown: AMI 0.60 micron technology) so that the Cadence tools would know the technology specifics of your design (like SPICE models, DRC rules, ERC rules, etc.) 



You can also use "compile tech library". This creates a local copy of the technology library in your run directory, thus it is not very efficient in the sense that every use has a copy of an indentical library. It is also not very flexible in the sense if there is any change made to this technology library, each user has to update his copy of the compiled tech library. Because of these two reasons, we prefer "attach to existing tech libary" to "compile tech library".

Now your library manager window should look like follows: 



Not only you have created a library "ELE462" of your own, but you have also included its associated technology library "NCSU_TechLib_ami06" in your library path. 
 
 

• Library Path Editor

Note when we created the new design, we didnot specify the library path in the "Create Library" dialogue box. The default path is under your Cadence run directory. If you want to know the exactly location of all the libraries, you can use "Library Path Editor" to show the library path.

In Library Manager window, click on Edit->Library Path.... The following window appears. 



This windows reflects the CDS.lib file in your Cadence run directory. In general, do not attempt to modify the existing library path in the library path editor.