Klayout impoprt multi-GDS

Comments

• tomas2004

  September 25

  Hello,

  What I normally do before importing multiple gds files into one layout is giving each cell of each one of them a unique prefix like "file1_", "file2_", ... It keeps things more organized after the merging and you clearly see which cells belong to which imported file... I use this script to rename the cells:

  https://www.klayout.de/useful_scripts.html#rename_cells.lym

  Cheers,

  Tomas
• jiunnweiyeh

  September 25

  Hi Tomas,
  Thanks for your reply , I knew that we can using a script to rename any cell.
  What the question is --- if "$" word can be a option , our designer just need to import all the GDS.
  And no -need any script , that will make they confuse.....
  Sometimes they need script , sometimes didn't need that...(not all case using same cell name in multi GDS file)
  that is reason I ask for . if script is only way , I need to Training and make some SOP....
• tomas2004

  September 25

  Hello,

  The "$" thingy is something internal and I'm don't think the user can change it, so only Matthias can answer...

  Cheers,

  Tomas
• Matthias

  September 25 edited September 25

  Yes, "$" is internal and cannot be changed be the user.

  But "$" is often used inside GDS cell names - for example Cadence also uses "$" and I have not seen other tools that have trouble reading such files.

  If you want to change the names, here is a custom query which changes "$" to "_":

  with cells * do cell.name=gsub(cell.name, "$", "_")
  

  But beware of cell name clashes - this method does not check if this substitution would create duplicate names.

  Matthias
• jiunnweiyeh

  September 26

  Hi @Matthias
  Got it , Thanks.
  in our side , we have 2 kind of tools to process GDS ,
  Klayout in first , and other softwafer in second that using tcl script.
  In Tcl, the $ character is used to denote a variable.
  we using tcl programming for script to process something base on our format/fix cellname.
  such as "Map" ,"reticle"...
  We are bumping house , the original cell (such as the RDL layout) created by our customer --IC design house.
  we just base on that to process and make it into our reticle Mask for internal photo process.
  We cannot control the format of the original GDS—it is determined by the customer.
  Additionally, we have specific cell names that are used in other software.
  Therefore, when a customer's cell name conflicts with our predefined names, we need to rename it.
  The $ character is another example also , since it affects the behavior of downstream Tcl scripts, it must be handled at the start.
  Of course, there are other ways to handle it, but those approaches will impack many scripts we've already completed.
• Matthias

  October 2

  I script that replaces the dollars would be this:

  ly = RBA::Layout::new
  top1 = ly.create_cell("TOP")
  # actually creates "TOP$1"
  top2 = ly.create_cell("TOP")
  # Would conflict with TOP$1
  # top3 = ly.create_cell("TOP_DOLLAR_1")
  
  puts "Original cell names:"
  ly.each_cell do |cell|
    puts cell.name
  end
  
  replace = "$"
  by = "_DOLLAR_"
  
  ly.each_cell do |cell|
    cn = cell.name
    cn_new = cn.gsub(replace, by)
    if cn != cn_new
      if ly.has_cell?(cn_new)
        raise("Name conflict for cell #{cn_new} after renaming '#{replace}' to '#{by}' in cell #{cn}")
      end
      cell.name = cn_new
    end
  end
  
  puts "New cell names:"
  ly.each_cell do |cell|
    puts cell.name
  end
  

  In this case, it replaces $ with _DOLLAR_. You should check if the new name conflicts with existing cells, just to be on the safe side.

  Matthias