Placing Ports
The following types of ports are available in Twin Builder: interface, ground, global, and page.
- An interface port serves as a connector into or out of a given design, and may contain termination and signal source definitions. The names of interface ports must be unique within a given design but may be duplicated from design to design.
- All ground ports connect to the reference or ground node, node 0.
- A global port serves as a means of common connection – in effect, a connection to a bus – within a given design, across hierarchical levels. You can define one or more circuit nodes to connect to global ports that cross hierarchy and schematic page boundaries. Within a design, all global ports with the same name are treated as if they are connected. The nature of the port, electrical, fluidic, thermal, and so on, is determined by the first connection made to the port. Once a global port has a specific nature, additional connections in the same or other levels of hierarchy can only be made to pins of that nature.
- A page port (connector) serves as a named connection to a signal that is common to two or more pages of the schematic.
The ports described in the next several topics are available from the Draw menu of the Schematic Editor, and via icons under Graphics on the Schematic ribbon:
