Automatically Compress Dump-off Regions 

The Verdi system provides the fsdbDumpon/fsdbDumpoff dump commands to turn off FSDB dumping for a specific time range. The dump-off region will be shown as blue in the waveform view, so that users don't need to pay attention to these no-value regions. Starting from the Novas 2009.10 release, this capability has been combined with the Compress Time Range feature. After the Verdi system detects any dump-off regions in the loaded FSDB file, the dump-off region will be compressed in the waveform view.

The following figure shows an example of how the compressed time range is presented in the waveform view. In this example the time range 3000ns ~ 7000ns is a dump-off region, so the time range has been compressed automatically. A plus icon will be shown on the compressed time range; users can click on that plus icon to expand the compressed time range.

After users expand the compressed time range, the dump-off region will be displayed again as a blue bar in the waveform view. The minus icon will then be displayed on the edges of the dump-off region, see the figure below for an example. Clicking on the minus icon can collapse the expanded time range again.

This automatic compression capability can be turned off by the Automatically Insert Dump-offs option in the Compress Time Range form. In the waveform view, invoke the View > Compress Time Range command to open the form, and un-check the Automatically Insert Dump-offs option to turn off this feature by default. The setting is saved into the novas.rc file automatically so the option will be off by default the next time you open the Verdi system.