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GDSII for Python

gdspy is a Python module for creating GDSII stream files, usually CAD layouts.

It includes a layout viewer for the geometries created, and now it also imports GDSII files.

Requirements

Download and Install

There are 3 options for downloading and installing gdspy.

These instructions assume you have the required software already installed, and that your Python installation and scripts folders are on your system path (usually C:\Python2* and C:\Python2*\Scripts on Windows).

On Linux and Mac OS these folders are usually automatically added to the path.

Option 1 (Windows only)

Use the binary installer from gdspy at Sourceforge. Make sure to download the installer that matches your installed Python version and your machine architecture.

Note

If you used the easy_install method below to install earlier versions of gdspy you have to run easy_install -mxN gdspy to remove the older version from the Python path before installing the new one.

Option 2

If you have setuptools installed, just use:

easy_install -U gdspy

Note

Windows users will need a development environment setup for Python extensions, such as Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition.

Option 3

Download the source files from gdspy at Sourceforge and extract it to any folder.

Execute the following command in a terminal window from within the extracted folder:

python setup.py install

Note

Linux and Mac OS user may need to use sudo in front of these commands.

History of Changes

Version 0.2.9 (December 14, 2011)

  • Attribute Cell.cell_list changed to Cell.cell_dict.
  • Changed the signature of the operation in boolean.
  • Order of cells passed to LayoutViewer is now respected in the GUI.
  • Complete re-implementation of the boolean function as a C extension for improved performance.
  • Removed precision argument in boolean. It is fixed at 1e-13 for merging close points, otherwise machine precision is used.
  • gds_image now accepts cell names as input.
  • Added optional argument depth to get_polygons
  • Added option to convert layers and datatypes in imported GDSII cells.
  • Argument exclude_layers from LayoutViewer changed to hidden_layers and behavior changed accordingly.
  • Shift + Right-clicking on a layer the layer-list of LayoutVIewer hides/unhides all other layers.
  • New buttons to zoom in and out in LayoutViewer.
  • Referenced cells below a configurable depth are now represented by theirs bounding boxes in LayoutViewer.

Version 0.2.8 (June 21, 2011)

  • GDSII file import
  • GDSII output automatically include required referenced cells.
  • gds_print also accepts file name as input.
  • Outlines are visible by default in LayoutViewer.
  • Added background color option in LayoutViewer.
  • Right-clicking on the layer list hides/unhides the target layer in LayoutViewer.
  • Cell.cell_list is now a dictionary indexed by name, instead of a list.
  • Added option to exclude created cells from the global list of cells kept in Cell.cell_list.
  • CellReference and CellArray accept name of cells as input.
  • Submodules lost their own __version__.

Version 0.2.7 (April 2, 2011)

  • Bug fixed in the boolean, which affected the way polygons with more vertices then the maximum were fractured.
  • gds_image accepts an extra color argument for the image background.
  • Screenshots takes from LayoutViewer have the same background color as the viewer.
  • The functions boolean and slice now also accept CellReference and CellArray as input.
  • Added the method fracture to Polygon and PolygonSet to automatically slice polygons into parts with a predefined maximal number of vertices.
  • Added the method fillet to Polygon and PolygonSet to round corners of polygons.

Version 0.2.6 (February 28, 2011)

  • When saving a GDSII file, ValueError is raised if cell names are duplicated.
  • Save screenshot from LayoutViewer.
  • gds_image accepts cells, instead of lists.
  • Outlines supported by gds_image.
  • LayoutViewer stores bounding box information for all visited layers to save rendering time.

Version 0.2.5 (December 10, 2010)

  • Empty cells no longer break the LayoutViewer.
  • Removed the gds_view function, superseded by the LayoutViewer, along with all dependencies to matplotlib.
  • Fixed a bug in boolean which affected polygons with series of collinear vertices.
  • Added a function to slice polygons along straight lines parallel to an axis.

Version 0.2.4 (September 04, 2010)

  • Added shortcut to Extents in LayoutViewer: Home or a keys.
  • PolygonSet is the new base class for Round, which might bring some incompatibility issues with older scripts.
  • Round elements, PolyPath, L1Path, and Path arc, turn and parametric sections are now automatically fractured into pieces defined by a maximal number of points.
  • Default value for max_points in boolean changed to 199.
  • Removed the flag to disable the warning about polygons with more than 199 vertices. The warning is shown only for Polygon and PolygonSet.
  • Fixed a bug impeding parallel parametric paths to change their distance to each other.

Version 0.2.3 (August 09, 2010)

  • Added the PolyPath class to easily create paths with sharp corners.
  • Allow None as item in the colors parameter of LayoutViewer to make layers invisible.
  • Added color outline mode to LayoutViewer (change outline color with the shift key pressed)
  • Increased the scroll region of the LayoutViewer canvas
  • Added a fast scroll mode: control + drag 2nd mouse button
  • Created a new sample script

Version 0.2.2 (July 29, 2010)

  • Changed the cursor inside LayoutViewer to standard arrow.
  • Fixed bugs with the windows version of LayoutViewer (mouse wheel and ruler tool).

Version 0.2.1 (July 29, 2010)

  • Bug fix: gds_image displays an error message instead of crashing when PIL is not found.
  • Added class LayoutViewer, which uses Tkinter (included in all Python distributions) to display the GDSII layout with better controls then the gds_view function. This eliminates the matplotlib requirement for the viewer functionality.
  • New layer colors extending layers 0 to 63.

Version 0.2.0 (July 19, 2010)

  • Fixed a bug on the turn method of Path.
  • Fixed a bug on the boolean function that would give an error when not using Polygon or PolygonSet as input objects.
  • Added the method get_polygons to Cell, CellReference and CellArray.
  • Added a copy method to Cell.
  • Added a flatten method to Cell to remove references (or array references) to other cells.
  • Fracture boolean output polygons based on the number of vertices to respect the 199 GDSII limit.

Version 0.1.9 (June 04, 2010)

  • Added L1Path class for Manhattan geometry (L1 norm) paths.

Version 0.1.8 (May 10, 2010)

  • Removed the argument fill from gds_view and added a more flexible one: style.
  • Fixed a rounding error on the boolean operator affecting polygons with holes.
  • Added a rotate method to PolygonSet.
  • Added a warning when PolygonSet has more than 199 points
  • Added a flag to disable the warning about polygons with more than 199 points.
  • Added a turn method to Path, which is easier to use than arc.
  • Added a direction attribute to Path to keep the information used by the segment and turn methods.

Version 0.1.7 (April 12, 2010)

  • New visualization option: save the geometry directly to an image file (lower memory use).
  • New functionality added: boolean operations on polygons (polygon clipping).
  • All classes were adapted to work with the boolean operations.
  • The attribute size in the initializer of class Text does not have a default value any longer.
  • The name of the argument format in the function gds_view was changed to fill (to avoid confusion with the built-in function format).

Version 0.1.6 (December 15, 2009)

  • Sample script now include comments and creates an easier to understand GDSII example.
  • Improved floating point to integer rounding, which fixes the unit errors at the last digit of the precision in the GDSII file.
  • Fixed the font for character 5.
  • Added a flag to gds_view to avoid the automatic call to matplotlib.pyplot.show().
  • In gds_view, if a layer number is greater than the number of formats defined, the formats are cycled.

Version 0.1.5a (November 15, 2009)

  • Class Text correctly interprets \n and \t characters.
  • Better documentation format, using the Sphinx engine and the numpy format.

Version 0.1.4 (October 5, 2009)

  • Class Text re-written with a different font with no overlaps and correct size.

Version 0.1.3a (July 29 2009)

  • Fixed the function to_gds of class Rectangle.

Version 0.1.3 (July 27, 2009)

  • Added the datatype field to all elements of the GDSII structure.

Version 0.1.2 (July 11, 2009)

  • Added the gds_view function to display the GDSII structure using the matplotlib module.
  • Fixed a rotation bug in the CellArray class.
  • Module published under the GNU General Public License (GPL)

Version 0.1.1 (May 12, 2009)

  • Added attribute cell_list to class Cell to hold a list of all Cell created.
  • Set the default argument cells=Cell.cell_list in the function gds_print.
  • Added member to calculate the area for each element type.
  • Added member to calculate the total area of a Cell or the area by layer.
  • Included the possibility of creating objects in user-defined units, not only nanometers.

Version 0.1.0 (May 1, 2009)

  • Initial release.