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Altair FlowTracer User Guide
FlowTracer is a complete system to create, manage, and execute design flows.
Graphical User Interface
Customize the GUI

Welcome
What's New
View new features for FlowTracer 2025.1.0.
FlowTracer Overview
An advanced mission critical dependency management platform for developing and executing flows.
FlowTracer Tutorials
Discover FlowTracer functionality with interactive tutorials.
Altair FlowTracer User Guide
FlowTracer is a complete system to create, manage, and execute design flows.
- FlowTracer Roles
  When using FlowTracer in large deployments, three main roles emerge: Administrator, Developer and User. In smaller organizations, a given person may have multiple roles, but the duties of each role still exist.
- Introduction to VOV
  FlowTracer is derived from the system "VOV" originally developed at UC-Berkeley. The word "VOV" is not an acronym, but can be thought of as a contraction of the word "evolve".
- Concepts and Terminology
- Run, Rerun, Stop and Kill Jobs
  The act of requesting FlowTracer to bring a particular target up-to-date is sometimes called a Retrace Request or more simply a Retrace.
- Find, Remove and Clean Files
- Graphical User Interface
  - The GUI Console
    The graphical user interface, called the "console", is invoked with the command vovconsole.
  - Set Browser
    The Set Browser allows you to list and edit the sets defined in the graph.
  - Set Viewer
    When you select a set by double clicking on it in the Set Browser panel, you display that set in the Set Viewer panel.
  - Graphical Tasker LED Monitor
  - System Log
    The system log, located at the bottom of the GUI, shows relevant events, one per line.
  - Customize the GUI
  - Icons
    All icons provide descriptions that you can find by hovering over the icon.
  - Using the Set Browser and Set Viewer
    The GUI console provides a Set Browser navigation panel on the left side, and a Set Viewer panel on the right side.
  - Keyboard Shortcuts
  - Node Selection
  - Weight Driven Placement
    FlowTracer uses a weight-driven placement (WDP) algorithm to place nodes close to their dependencies and minimize overlapping edges. A higher weight is assigned to nodes with low fanout, which allows nodes with single dependency relationships to stack perfectly. A lower weight is assigned to high fanout dependencies.
  - Navigate the Flow Graph
    Navigating the flow graph means moving from one node to another following the input/output dependencies.
  - Monitor Taskers
    To monitor the activity of the taskers, use either vsm from the CLI, or click Console > Vov Monitor from the GUI.
- Browser Interface
  This chapter will cover how you can use your web browser to manage FlowTracer.
- Command Line Interface
  The Altair Accelerator products have a rich set of programs that can be run on the shell command line.
- Create Sets with Selection Rules
- Advanced Information
- Troubleshooting
- Create a FlowTracer Project
- Resource Management
  Altair Accelerator includes a subsystem for managing computing resources. This allows the design team to factor in various constraints regarding hardware and software resources, as well as site policy constraints.
- Rename Nodes
  Renaming of nodes is a task for more advanced users. In most cases, it is simpler to forget all nodes and rebuild the trace from scratch.
- Miscellaneous
- Reports
Altair FlowTracer Administrator Guide
This manual is aimed at the person who will be the administrator for FlowTracer. This person will be responsible for configuring the network resources, setting up the licensing, and establishing security and access rules for the system.
Altair FlowTracer Developer Guide

Customize the GUI

Console Window Size

You can adjust the minimum size of the window through the Window Size tab of the Preferences dialog.

Customize Component Graphs

You can also adjust the size and graphing of the components through the Graph tab of the Preferences dialog as shown below. The adjustments include the type of connectors for connecting the nodes, node spacing, whether or not to "break" long rows, and more.

General Customization with vovautoexec.tcl

If a file named vovautoexec.tcl is present in the directory from which vovconsole is started, it is sourced when starting the console. You will need to study the vovconsole code and have Tcl/Tk programming skills to make effective use of this method.