Nextgen Raster Library Revision History

This page summarizes changes, fixes and enhancements to the NexGen RIP program.

v1.11 01/02/2018

The program was crashing on a specific GDSII file when trying to pre-allocate some storage for raster computations based on an estimate. The issue was fixed.

v1.08 03/28/2016

The API reference documentation for the NextGenRaster product is now available.
Here's how a customer can learn to use the NextGenRaster as a library:
1. Create a use case that's models their application's need using the NextGenRaster program (nextgenraster64.exe). Use NextGenRaster_CommandLine.pdf for understanding the command-line options
2. Enable logging (-log:) and add -emitcode to emit c++ code whenever a call is made to the NextGenRaster library API.
3. Run the program and study the log file. They should see how the program makes use of the NextGenRaster API at different stages of execution and co-relate the function parameters to the values that get passed at run-time.
4. Refer to the NextGenRaster_APIReference.pdf for details about any particular function or data structure.

v1.08 03/22/2016

BMP is written top down so that what you see is what you get in third party bitmap viewers.

v1.07 02/26/2016

very thin path-like polygons were being rasterized as thick rectangles (refer: badthin.gds) This has been fixed.

v1.06 02/17/2016

This version supports independent DPI in the X and Y axis.

The argument -greylevel has been renamed to -dither. This makes it clear that it produces a dithered monochrome output and not a gray scale bitmap output.

v1.05 02/12/2016

This new argument controls the method of "filling" polygons and paths.

-fill:solid   - fills the edges and interiors of boundaries and paths with pixels at the specified density (default = 1)

-fill:outline   - draws only the edges of paths and boundaries.

-fill:pathline   - draws paths as 1 pixel lines connecting the vertices. Boundaries are drawn as if fill:solid were in effect.

-fill:pathpoint   - plots only the vertices of a path at 1 pixel dots. Boundaries are drawn as if fill:solid were in effect.

Instructs the rasterizer to process the window or strip under consideration from right (max X) to left (min X). The default is to process the window from left to right. This argument is useful when supplying data to bi-directional lithography equipment.

v1.04 01/14/2015

Softkey Licensing was implemented.

the various modules and calling engine were ported to 64 bit Linux.

v1.03 12/07/2015

The dither was not properly implemented when -inverse (polarity reversal) was selected.

v1.02 09/30/2015

Instead of a continuous fill, the user can now specify a dithered fill. The parameter varies from 0 to 1.0. This is not an 8 bit gray scale output but an approximation of greyscale using a Bayesian dither algorithm.

v1.01 01/14/2015

The first release of Nextgen Raster Library.