Automated Design for Micromachining / News: Recent posts

This update contains several minor changes. Most users should see no change in operation.

Some of the parameterized cells in the ADSM have been ported to GPE, the scripting language used by Design Workshop Technologies (http://www.designw.com/). More cells will be ported given demand.

This release includes a new export format, Gerber plot files. This export format is new, and not yet extensively tested, so users' distance will vary. It appears not all viewers respect all image directives.

Also, viewers must support the extended version of the Gerber plot format.

The latest version of png2layout has been released.

This code included one change in behaviour, which is fairly major. Hence, the increment in the major version number.

Output layouts should now appear in the same orientation as the images. EDA tools and images had different coordinate conventions, which are now be handled during translation.

This release improves support for importing various layouts. In particular, support for non-standard GDSII files where the top cell is not the first cell in the file. Support for handling empty cells, and additional styling are also included.

This release includes a number of small bug fixes.

New versions of liblayout, and the command-line utility layout2layout, have been released.

This new release completely revamps how styling information is handled. Few changes to output has happened yet, although the format for configuration files has occurred. It is expected that the revamped code will lead to improved flexibility of the output as the output drivers are upgraded.

The transition of the postscript drivers is complete. Two separate drivers are now available. The first creates colour postscript files, with all layers on a single page. These files, which should be convertable to EPS, are basically image files. The second driver creates black and white images, with one layer per page, and is intended for the creation of masks.... read more

As noted in the subject, new releases of two sub-projects have been posted.

Note that these releases represent a transition change in the way that PostScript output is handled. A new driver for create PostScript masks (namespace psmask) has been created. Users who wish to create masks should transfer to this driver. Note that support for darkfield masks has been added.

In future release, the standard postscript driver (namespace ps) will create images. All layers will be drawn on a single page, and use CSS styling information.

An updated version of png2layout has been released that addresses the configuration bug of the previous release. This release should install without requiring liblayout to be present.

This is a command-line utility for converting PNG images to layouts. This program has been used to convert images of logos etc into layouts for inclusion in microelectronics and micromachining designs.

There is an error in the documentation, which states that liblayout is required to build this programme. This is incorrect. Changes to the makefile, however, will be required if liblayout is not installed.