Setting up Hierarchical Designs

A hierarchical design is a schematic design that contains subdesigns or subcircuits. Any number of hierarchical levels can be created, and any number of subdesigns can be placed in another design. The design at the top of such a structure is commonly called the top-level design or top-level schematic. A design that contains a subdesign is called the parent of that subdesign. Subdesigns can include subcircuits, or external models coupled to the parent schematic.

You can set up analyses at any level in a hierarchy, analyze, and view results of the analyses. An analysis performed on a design at a level other than the top level includes that design and all of its subdesigns and subcircuits, if any, but not its parent design or designs at any higher levels.

Analyses you specify for various designs at different levels of a hierarchy are entirely independent of each other. There are two approaches to creating a hierarchical design: bottom-up and top-down.