Fill Tool Spacing

edited December 2015 in General
I am trying to use the fill tool to create a fill shape pattern to fill a box. The box is 10 um per side and the fill shape box is 0.5 per side. I can get the fill shape to have a border but now I want the fill to have certain pitch. How do I specify the pitch of the fill?

Thanks!

Comments

  • edited November -1

    Quick fix until Matthias can answer: In your child cell, draw a dummy layer defining the cell's extents including that margin you desire. Choose that layer in Fill Tool > Fill Cell > Boundary layer. Works for me on KL 0.23.4.

    Better fix: I actually thought this is what Fill Tool > Fill Cell > Fill Cell margin was for, but that input box doesn't appear to do anything for me. Perhaps Matthias can comment on what that input box is intended to do or whether that input box is functional.

    David

  • edited November -1

    Hi David,

    You're right - exactly that's what it was meant for.

    I'll check why it isn't working. And the workaround is exactly what I had proposed too.

    Thanks for mentioning this.

    Matthias

  • edited November -1

    Hi all,

    I stand corrected. The workaround is actually the right way to do this.

    The margin parameter has a different meaning. It's supposed to keep a distance to other fill cells if the cells are not on a common raster in enhanced fill mode. That requires some explanation I guess:

    Imagine your fill pattern is one that requires a regular arrangement of cells - for example a striped pattern would be created from fill cells containing a stripe segment. Now if you combine multiple such cells in a regular arrangement the result will be a striped fill area. So far, so good.

    But this requires all fill cells to be arranged on the same common raster. Otherwise you'd get breaks in the pattern leading to fractures of the stripe array. But this is exactly what happens in the enhanced fill mode: in that case, the algorithm will leave the common raster to achieve a better coverage. To mitigate the effect of fractures, you can employ the margin parameter to introduce a distance between regions of different raster origin and create an empty space between such incompatible regions.

    Matthias

  • edited November -1

    I understand now, though it's not clear just from the wording in the dialog box. Actually, it might be nice to add that feature? I mean, a dx,dy cell margin box that controls this, so the user doesn't have to draw an additional dummy layer. Just a thought.

    David

  • edited December 2015

    It not even clear to me :-)

    Sure a margin is possible. Though there is even the possibility of a negative margin and different margins on every side. I imagine a Kemerer fill pattern which requires an overlapping layout and a smaller-than-bounding box tile boundary. Maybe the most generic solution is to provide four coordinates that define the basic tile box.

    Matthias

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