Can traced nets be saved to file for re-tracing?

Using trace net on gerber files to build up the netlist. Would be a shame if I had to do the tracing all over next time I open the pcb. I cannot find any information in the .pcb file related to traces.

Comments

  • Hello,

    you can export the traced nets to a layout and save this layout as GDS.

    Another option is to use "Trace All Nets" from 0.26 (Caution: still somewhat experimental). This will produce a "netlist database" you can save and load. This database contains all the information for all nets.

    Matthias

  • edited May 2021

    Hi Matthias.
    Just ran into a similar issue and jumped to this (old) discussion.
    Do you see any (easy) way to save the data of the tracenet window, so once closing Klayout and opening again, one can continue from previous stage? or maybe collaborate results with colleges?
    Thanks!
    Allon

  • @allonpa Did you try the "Trace All Nets" approach? The netlist database is the best I can offer and it's the basis of the LVS feature. So I guess it's no longer experimental.

    Matthias

  • Thanks @Matthias . I have tried and it seems to work very well.
    Just to make sure, till now I have used trace net on each net, which took a lot of efforts..
    Is running "trace all nets" in flat mode, and then using "probe net" in the netlist database browser expected to give similar results (it seems to be like that)
    Thanks!
    Allon

  • edited June 2021

    @allonpa Yes, the expectation is exactly that. Everything else would be a bug :)

    I mean there maybe tiny differences such as "when two polygons touch in only one point are the still considered connected?", but in general there should not be a any difference.

    "trace all" should even be faster. If you have a hierarchical layout (as is the case in VLSI layouts), hierarchical mode can be faster in extracing all nets than a single net takes in manual tracing mode. Plus the net database will be much smaller. For PCB I don't think flat or hierarchical make a difference.

    Matthias

  • Thanks @Matthias. Thanks great!
    Allon

  • Hi Matthias,
    Thanks for the tip regarding the "trace all" functionality.
    I started exploring it. However, there seem to be no way to name the detected traces. Is this possible or maybe scheduled for a new release?

    Thanks and best regards,
    Ayad

  • Hi Ayad,

    labels should be detected, provided you include the label layers in the connectivity. So if your net carries a label on one of the layers participating in the stack definition, the name of the trace should reflect that.

    Matthias

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