When you want a frame to receive a particular event from an external program, you must register the frame with OpenROAD for that particular event. Registering a frame tells OpenROAD to notify the frame whenever an external program sends the specified event. For example, if frame A is registered to receive the external _update event, whenever OpenROAD receives the external_update event from the external program, it notifies frame A that the event has occurred. OpenROAD then adds the external_update event to the event queue. (If the specified frame is not running at the time, OpenROAD simply ignores the event. This does not cause an error.)

You can register one frame for any number of external events. You can also register more than one frame for the same external event.

To register the frame to receive the external event, use the FrameExec RegisterUserEvent Method. To remove an event from the list of registered events for the frame, use the FrameExec UnRegisterUserEvent Method.

The RegisterUserEvent method registers a frame to receive the specified external event. The syntax follows:

To specify the frame to be registered, you must reference the FrameExec variable for the running instance of the frame. (You cannot use the frame name because OpenROAD lets you open the same frame more than once.) For more information about how to reference the FrameExec variable, see SendUserEvent Method.

To register the event for the frame that currently has the input focus, use the following syntax:

The following example illustrates registering the external_update user event:

The UnRegisterUserEvent method removes one or all external events from the list of registered events for a frame. The syntax follows:

To specify the frame, you must reference the FrameExec variable for the running instance of the frame. For more information about how to reference the FrameExec variable, see SendUserEvent Method.

The following example illustrates this: