Training Courses

Every Clemson University student with a Cadence account is automatically enrolled in the Cadence Academic Network, giving them access to Cadence’s extensive database of educational materials. These range from introductory software training to advanced academic curricula, all of which are regularly utilized by engineers and researchers.

Learning Maps

In order to navigate the 5000+ training courses and videos offered by the program, Cadence has supplied a series of Learning Maps to help navigate their training courses. Please double check the Resources page to make sure that the software required by a given course is available under the Academic License.

Enrolling in Courses

Training Dashboard

Each user has a personal training dashboard through which they can access all of their training courses. The easiest way to add a course to the training dashboard is from the Learning Map document above. Each course should be hyperlinked so that if you click on its name, it’ll redirect you to the Cadence page for that course. From here, you can log in to your Cadence account and add the course. Choose “Online Courses”, and then select “Enroll” next to the number of the software release which you are using.

License restrictions may result in a situation where we do not have access to a specific software version listed on a training course. In this case, we recommend choosing the closest version available.

To access your training dashboard, go back to the Cadence Support home page, then select Learning > Training Dashboard from the top banner menu. Your training dashboard will show you all of the courses you are currently enrolled in, and will allow you to select a course to go to its page and resume your training.

From the Learning tab on the Cadence Support page, you can also select Online Courses or Training Catalog to go to a page where you can more easily search for and enroll into courses.

Once you have some courses added to your training dashboard, you’re ready to get started with your training! Also, feel free to explore this Learning section of the Cadence Support site more, as you can find different tools that will help you track your progress in your courses, view any badges you’ve received, and look at your training stats for different courses.

Starting Courses

Once you’ve found a training course that you’d like to start, just click on the course’s icon on your training dashboard. This should open up the course’s page, where you can view your progress in completing the different course materials, and it should also open up a pop-up window for the course’s training modules. If this is the first time you’re beginning a Cadence training course, you will have to complete a license agreement. Additionally, if it’s your first time starting a specific course, it may take you to a page containing information about the course, where you can select “Start Course” to begin working on the training modules.

All of the course’s content is in the learning modules. Here’s where you’ll have your lesson videos, demos, and lab assignments for learning and practicing with the different Cadence tools. One thing that is very important is to scroll down to the bottom of the first module, usually titled Module 01: About this Course, and click on the “Database Download” button. This will scroll down to another page with different download buttons. Find and click the “Lab Database” button to download all of the lab materials that you’ll need for the course. This will download a .zip file containing the demo files and directories you’ll be using to create designs for the course. Open up File Explorer on your computer and go to Downloads. Right click on the .zip folder which you just downloaded and click “Extract All…”, and then choose a directory to extract the files to. I recommend saving them into the Cadence directory that holds your Cadence software downloads, and then in a new folder in there titled with the name of the course. Hit “Extract” and then wait for your files to extract, which may take a minute.

Student Recommendations

Though less technical, the Cadence Student Ambassador and “Semiconductor 101” courses offer are great starting points for those wishing to learn more about Cadence and the semiconductor industry as a whole.

For general use, we recommend that students begin by learning about tools for Printed Circuit Board (PCB) design. “OrCAD X Capture” and “Allegro X PCB Editor Basic Techniques” walk through the most important functionality of Cadence’s Schematic Capture and PCB Editor software for designing circuit boards. From this point, there are many more advanced PCB, package design, and electromagnetic analysis courses available to those interested in creating advanced circuit board layouts.

Those interested in integrated circuit (IC) and VLSI design have a few different options. For analog and/or mixed-signal design, see courses on the Virtuoso Schematic Editor, ADE (Analog Design Environment - an advanced simulation environment), and Layout Editor. At this stage, it is also helpful to go through a few of the Spectre Simulator courses to understand how simulations are executed. There are also modeling courses in Verilog-A, Verilog-AMS, and SystemVerilog focused on the fundamentals on real modeling for the purpose of creating component models or testbenches.

For digital designers, the Cadence RTL-to-GDSII Flow is a great starting point which runs through the creation of digital systems in the Cadence environment from start to finish. There are courses in Genus for advanced Synthesis, Static Timing Analysis (STA) fundamentals & Tempus timing analysis, Innovus for Place and Route (PnR), and more.

For system verification, there are many comprehensive courses in various Hardware Description Languages (HDLs - such as Verilog), the Universal Verification Method (UVM), and more. Cadence also offers Onboarding Curricula at the end of the learning maps document which are used in industry to train real engineers. These are much lengthier, but are intended to bring you to the point of basic proficiency in any given domain. These skills are highly valuable to employers, and being pre-trained in the Cadence environment for any given specialization will give you a great advantage in the job market.

Feel free to Contact Us if you have questions about specific software or courses.