GDS2ASCII is a utility program that converts the binary GDSII stream format into an ASCII file. Once in ASCII the designer can use a variety of powerful tools written in languages such as awk, sed and perl to check and modify his file without the need for a CAD system.
The ASCII file can then be reconverted into GDSII stream using the ASCII2GDS module.
Programmers can also create GDSII files by synthesizing the ASCII format and then converting the ASCII file into a GDSII binary layout file.
Both programs are command line tools and designed to be called either from scripts or from other programs.
GDS2ASCII supports the following GDSII record types:
| GDS_BGNLIB | library | |
| GDS_BGNSTR | begin structure | |
| GDS_BOUNDARY | boundary | |
| GDS_BOX | box (rarely used) | |
| GDS_ENDSTR | ends structure | |
| GDS_NODE | node; rarely used | |
| GDS_PATH | path element | |
| GDS_SREF | cell placement | |
| GDS_AREF | cell array | |
| GDS_TEXT | text element |
GDS2ASCII writes two different output formats:
ACS standard
- a verbose format, easy to read and parse.Compressed Shape
- a compressed version designed to minimize file size.Cell Instance Finder
- a utility which exports a text file with insertion points of specific cells.gds2ascii command line
- Describes all the command line options of gds2ascii.