Reusing CAD tools in object oriented based framework

The growing importance of VLSI is getting much attention. But the increasing complexity of VLSI also creates lots of problems for the computer scientists to work on. If there is no other new way to help the designers, the whole design process will get more difficult to maintain. That's the need for an object-oriented (OO) design framework for CAD world. Not only to develop new methods is needed in CAD world, to extend the reuse technology into the design process will also become the main key to success. We propose an OO based framework with object specification language (OSL) for reuse. In our OO design framework, CAD tools are reversed engineered into toolbox in reuse library. During the design (reuse) process, toolboxes are selected automatically into the design process. Thus, tool selection, integration and adoption problems are converted into the design process with the specification of OSL. With this OO design framework, tool reuse and design data reuse can be automatically integrated into the design process.