What does the Net Tracer do?

oliverks

I am uncertain what the net tracer is supposed to do. Is there any documentation on this anywhere?

I want to use KLayout to hook up some cells that I generate with some software I wrote.

Is there a good way of labeling the ports so that KLayout "knows" these are part of the same net?

Oliver

Matthias

Hi Oliver,

there is a short documentation here:
http://klayout.de/advanced_um.html#net_tracing.

Basically, it's intended as a visualization tool, not a layout extraction feature. It follows a net from a given point and highlights all connected shapes. Because it's based on detecting touching shapes incrementally, it does not join nets, even it they are labeled identically. You have to create a physical connection to highlight the whole net, i.e. by instantiating the cell and connect the ports.

The net tracer's implementation is pretty simple and provides a fast way to extract and highlight single, small nets. Currently, the algorithm is pretty slow when extracting large nets like power nets. For that application, a hierarchical, bottom-up approach would be a better choice than the incremental approach.

Best regards,

Matthias