What does the Net Tracer do?

edited September 2010 in General
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

Comments

  • edited September 2010

    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

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