This new version has been tested on and supports the followings operating systems:
CentOS release 6.9 (Final)
CentOS Linux release 7.9.2009 (Core)
Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS
Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.6 (Ootpa)

gdsplot Windows/Linux 5.44 1/6/2017

Under Windows, Fixed OEM printing issue.
Fixed issue with Tile Printing under Windows.
Updated xPreview to view BMP files.
Fixed issue with Xpreview under Linux - large size raster plots failed to load to the viewer.
Support up to latest Windows 10.

gdsplot Windows 5.43 6/3/2013

Automatic tiling is now available. Output file names for tiles is filename_plot1, filename_plot2, etc. The tiles are ordered first by column (top to bottom), and then row (left to right), so that if the plot has 2 columns and 2 rows, it will plot the top left, bottom left, top right, and then bottom right tile.

gdsplot Windows 5.41 2/20/2012

In the Setup Layer Fill menu, an Apply button has been added. The user can load a map file, make any changes they would like, and apply the map file without saving changes. The changes will be remembered until a new map file is loaded, the current one is saved, or the program is exited.

Added *.str to the default extension list when selecting a GDSII File.

xgdsplot 5.42a 5/29/2009

Version 5.42 had a bug when plotting in scale multiGB files. The bug was due to the gdstile routine which was not updated to 64 bit. Bug was reported by IDT and it has been fixed.

xgdsplot 5.42 4/3/2009

This new Solaris version contains only a 64 bit gdsplt engine to handle large files.
This new version has Flexlm support but no "lserv" support.

The Linux version contains 32 and 64 bit gdsplt engines.
The 64 bit gdsplt binary appears as "gdsplt64", while the 32 bit binary continues to appear as "gdsplt".
The GUI will determine whether the current runtime environment is 32 or 64 bit, and will invoke the appropriate engine.
The 64 bit release is intended to solve the issues associated with plotting very large GDSII files. This release will not fix the condition where a 32 bit compute environment is not sufficient to plot large GDSII files. Although this condition is not exactly predictable before plotting because the 32 bit version can handily plot GDSII files easily greater than 4 to 10 GB - the actual details of the GDSII database can generate memory footprints in excess of 2 GB. In this case, the GDSII file should be plotted on a 64 bit system with sufficient swap. This means that the plotting platform should be suitably configured, this does not seem to happen out of the box for many LINUX installations.

xgdsplot 5.40 10/7/2008

This version fixes the bug reported by Hagai for the GDSII file top_level_B1.gds.
The bug report indicated the data seemed to be dropped in the LINUX version of GDSPLOT, but the not the Solaris or Windows versions.
This behavior was the result of a bug in the structure name hashing scheme in the gdsplt engine. The fix was a two line code change. No formatters or rasterizers were changed.
The Windows version did not exhibit this behavior, because that release v5.35a predates the code change responsible for the bug.

xgdsplot 5.39 06/2/2008

When the GDSII file had many cells (~100k and up), xgdsplot crashed during the scanning phase. The user could still run the plotting from a command line. This new version supports such files and has a 5x speed improvement in plotting time. Even files with less cells will exhibit some speed improvements (the more cells, the more speed improvements).

xgdsplot now supports GDSII files with over 1024 layers. A message will pop up to tell the user of such layer number.

Cadence Interface 2.57 02/16/2008

This version of the Cadence interface supports Virtuoso 5.x and 6.x.

Ver. 5.38 01/5/2007

This Linux release has been fully qualified to run on the following LINUX platforms:
FEDORA CORE 4 32BIT
FEDORA CORE 6 32BIT
REDHAT E3 32BIT INTEL
REDHAT E4 32BIT INTEL
REDHAT E4 64BIT OPTERON
REDHAT E4 64BIT ATHLON
REDHAT E5 64BIT OPTERON
REDHAT E5 64BIT ATHLON
SUSE 9 64BIT
SUSE 10 32/64 BIT

Ver. 5.37 08/18/2006

Plot was incorrect at 600DPI on Solaris. Problem reported by GUC and it is fixed.

Cell menu displayed incorrect cell names when they were over 32 characters. This has been fixed. Reported by National Semiconductor.

The xgdsplot GUI would not release the license during plotting, causing a license error on Linux. Problem fixed.

xgdsplot had a problem when saving the plot to a file name that has -d in it. Problem fixed.

Ver. 5.36 01/31/2006

This version of xgdsplot supports custom end type for path.

Ver. 5.35a 04/12/2005

This image reflects support for full page format in RTL. It forces the bitmap dimensions to be exactly the same as the requested page size - In this case, GDSPLOT will not try to save paper. This feature was requested by Fuji-Xerox for their new line of RTL plotters.
The type of RTL output to choose for this feature is one of the following:

HP650C Color Std FP
HP650C Color Fast Enhanced FP
HP750C Color FP

Ver. 5.35 12/14/04

A fix for plotting correct text, which is the first issue in your list of open issues below. The control for text reflection/rotation has been separarted into two separate controls to allow the toggling of text reflection and text rotation independently. This allows for all four possible ways to correct the text.

A fix to the recent magic AREF issue. Magic AREF is now always enabled internally and all user-visble references to "magic" have been removed.

Ver. 5.33 05/15/04

After listening to requests from a number of our customers, we are pleased to announce a PreView option within the gdsplot software. This will allow the RTL data to be viewed on-screen prior to plotting, to enable the engineer to confirm that the correct layers, colors and fills have been applied to the plot.
If the plot looks good on the screen, you can hit the 'OK' button and it will be sent to the plotter.
If it doesn't look good, just hit the 'cancel' button and the plot will be aborted.
This facility will save the engineer plotting time, paper and ink, particularly when setting up new color tables.

When plotting small windows, xgdsplot had a rounding error at the top row and right column of the windows plotted. It is not noticeable on a plot, but created a problem for the semiconductor equipment makers who use the tool to rasterize small window of the chip and compare it to an actual image.

xgdsplot had a bug when plotting multiple windows to file in batch mode. It is fixed.

xgdsplot crashes under some Linux OS conditions. Problem was related to Flexlm libraries and other libraries that were dynamically linked. These libraries are now statically linked and that fixes the problem.

xgdsplot now supports Linux 9, Enterprise 3.x and runs on the Optron 64 bit workstations.

Ver. 5.30 for UNIX 06/11/03

Added plot.cfg option, GDS.ReflectRotateText: on/off, to plot text with no Reflection and rotation. Default is to plot text with reflection and rotation. Problem reported by Lattice and it is due to Cadence's exporting mirrored text in the GDSII file when a cell is mirrored.

Added plot.cfg option, GDS.UseTextSize: on/off and GDS.TextSize: 5, to specify the width of the text strokes in pixels. TextSize is used if UseTextSize is set to on, otherwise, text are plotted using the layer line type.

Older versions might crash when many layers are specified to be included or excluded in the cfg file. This has been fixed. In addition, the layers in the cfg file should be separated by commas with NO spaces. e.g. 200:0,300:0 instead of 200:0, 300:0 The spaces could cause data missing for the layers after the first space.

The layers in the cfg file should be separated by commas with NO spaces. e.g. 200:0,300:0 instead of 200:0, 300:0 The spaces could change the specified plot output file name to be something like ":0,".

When many windowed plots are defined in the .cfg file, gdsplt might crash or stop after plotting over 90 plots. This has been fixed.

Ver. 5.25 for HPUX 11 10/15/02

This version supports the Globetrotter FLEXlm license manager. Requires that you run lmgrd 8.1 or newer.

This version supports HPUX 11 and up. It does not support 10.x.

Ver. 5.24f for Linux 7.2 and Solaris 09/26/02

This version supports the Globetrotter FLEXlm license manager. Requires that you run lmgrd 8.1 or newer.

xgdsplot Linux 5.24 06/05/02

This release includes these features:
1. All applications are statically linked. This will avoid any shared library problems, such as Motif or C++ runtime libraries not being present on a user's system.
We provide two separate release packages for xgdsplot Linux v5.24: one for Red Hat 6.2, and one for Red Hat 7.2.
Red Hat 6.2 executables will run on Red Hat 6.2-7.2, but do not provide Large File support.
Red Hat 7.2 executables will run on Red Hat 7.2 or better, and provide Large File support for files larger than 2GB.

2. Some performance improvements may be evident, especially during flattening and plot generation.

Cadence Interface update version 2.28

Support for all Preferences values to be overridden in .cdsinit.
We have modified the code to support all the variables (which control the iGDSPLOT preferences through the igdsplot.Xdefaults file) in the .cdsinit file. This will allow complete control by sys admins.

Plot striping
Automatic striping is added to the interface.

v5.21 09/19/2001

Automatic Tiling
xgdsplot can now perform automatic tiling when the user specifies a scale factor which creates a plot area larger than the page size defined. Once the user selects "Start Plotting" from the menu, xgdsplot will inform the user the number of sheets it is about to generate.

v5.20 07/14/2001

New Faster RTL Driver
This version has 3 new RTL plotting modes which can plot in fast draft, enhanced and final mode. These modes are configured for HP650C and could be used for most HP plotters.

Default Fill Pattern
Older versions would plot layer solid filled and layer/datatype blank(white on white) if there is no entry in the map file to specify the color and fill pattern for the layer(layer/datatype). It has changed to plot outline in a default color with no filling if the color/fill pattern is not specified for the layer in the map file.

Layers List Limit
The lists of include and exclude layers now has a maximum length of 8192 characters, increased from 256.

Cadence Fill Patterns
This version ships with more fill patterns which look like Cadence's fill patterns.

Resizing the Select GDSII File Dialog
In older versions, this dialog might not come up with the correct width to show the directories and files. This has been fixed to show the directories and files (without the full path). Resizing the dialog also resizes the width of the directories and files lists to show the names (not the full path). Moreover, the previously resized size of the dialog is preserved during the run of the program for all file open dialog in Qckvu.

Aref Control
The Aref control is not remembered and reset to full if the GDSII file is viewed. This has been fixed.

v5.00 03/14/2001

Plotting Layers That Do Not Exist
This version plots the legend for the specified layers even if they do not exist in the GDS file. (Requested by Harry Hagelstein from Philips).

Array Reference Mode
Added array reference mode 1 to plot just the outer rows and columns. (Requested by Ron Glaze from Mosel Vitelic).

New Install
The version comes with a newer and simplier installation (Requested by Britta Krueger who is the sys admin at Mosaid).

Sharing map file which is write protected
Older versions would force to overwrite the write-protected map file. This version will not overwrite the write protected map file, it informs users that the map file is write protected and new layer settings are not saved. Users can continue to use the write protected map file.

Job File Location
This version generates the job file in the current working directory, the same as the ssn file, instead of the GDS file directory.

Select GDS File Dialog
This version shows GDS files in the directory where Xgdsplot is started in the Select GDS File dialog box.  Once a file is selected, it is remembered and will go back to the same directory on the same run.
Selecting the Map file also starts up in the start up directory.

Scan GDS File for Datatype Information
This version will rescans the GDS file if the .ssn file does not exist, or it does not contain datatype information.  It still keeps the .ssn file in place so a rescan will not be necessary next time the GDS file is plotted again.

More Fill Patterns
This version provides more fill patterns.

Missing Data in Normal Mode
4.10 might drop data when plotting under Normal Mode. This has been fixed.

Map File Entries - The map file is sorted according to layer, then datatype, everytime the map file is saved in the Layer Parameters dialog box.

Layer Selection - Added select and clear all functions to the layer selection dialog box inside the Plot/Page Description dialog box.

Default Memory
Default raster and swap memory are changed from 8 to 64.

Windows Color and Plotting Color(Black/White)
Older versions swapped black and white if the display window color is not white. This has been fixed.

Cannot Plot and View
Older versions might not be able to plot and view after Xgdsplot has been running for a long time. This has been fixed.

Data Got Clipped Off
Older versions under Normal Output Control would generate clipped off data when data is rotated. This is not a problem under Enhanced mode. This has been fixed.

Xgdsvu updated to support xgdsplot 4.10
This version of Xgdsvu is needed to support reading map files with datatype discrimination information. Older versions might crash if such a map file is used. Though, datatype discrimination is not supported in Xgdsvu, only in Xgdsplot starting 4.10.

Increase Scale Limit
Previous versions allow custom scale value up to the grid value of the GDSII file. This version removes this limitation.

GDSII File Extension
Added control to default the GDSII file selection dialog box to users specified GDSII file extension, instead of always *.gds. Customer: Alan Fan, Avant, Taiwan.

Plot Header Corrected: Scale Factor
When a scale is specified for a plot, the reported scale in the Plot Header was always 1. This has been fixed.

Scaled Plot Auto Rotation
Scaled plot might not be auto rotated correctly. This has been fixed.

Change TEXT entity handle
TEXT entity may has width and magnitude. This version will default to ignore the width information.

Fix Clipping
The clipping bug occured when the following conditions were true:

• plotting a portion of the drawing (window plot) and data exists over the right edge of the plot window
• legends are required and the total legend width is wider than the drawing window.

Tighten Reference Structure Database
References are stored more efficiently reducing by 30 bytes per reference the amount of space required.

Buckets are introduced into the sorting function to minimize unnecessary comparison

Special SREF database to minimize duplicate data and comparison AREF's are not sorted as they use a high speed bitmap copy function.

Bug Fix for Undefined Structures
GDSII file that contained references to undefined structures would put v4.00 in infinite loop or crash the engine. This condition is now detected.

Add Progress Percentage
Added a progress percentage output indicating work done on the top structure.

Database size is reduced. Only SREF and AREF elements are stored in RAM. Boundary, path and text elements are read directly from the GDSII file on demand. This elminates the loading time at the beginning, but adds some additional processing time at the back end.

Small GDSII files will see little or no speed improvement but the large files that would have extensive required disk-swapping will run much faster overall.

the -vref option, reqd for very large files is now obsolete.

SREF and AREF
SREF and AREF objects without STRAN would cause confusion in previous version, and the reference extents calculation was incorrect. This is now fixed.

New Keying Installation
Node locked codes are stored in a file called acs.key so there is no need anymore to run REKEY program when you get an update.

Black and White Fill Pattern
Under CDE settings with non-white system background, older versions would show black and white fill pattern buttons reversed. This has been fixed.

Raster Memory and No. of Swap RAM
Older versions had a maximum limit of 1024M. This limit has been raised to 4096M.

New Gscan
This version uses a new GDS file scanner, gscan 1.32, which is 2 times faster then the previous version. The scanner scans the GDSII file selected by the user.

Auto Tile on Metric Paper Sizes
Auto tile on metric paper sizes previously (and erroneously) assumed that the paper size=A. This has been fixed.

Plot/Page Setup
This version remembers both the plot-to-file and custom output settings. Users who toggle between these 2 settings do not need to reenter it each time.

Cfg File Settings
Older versions would only use cfg file if a job file exists and points to that cfg file. This version will use .cfg if it exists regardless of the existence of the job file.
If users choose to rescan GDS file, then xgdsplot will use any remembered settings in local GDSVU.CFG, if it does not exist, then it will use GDSVU.CFG in the installation directory.

Unable to find self
This message would pop up if the PATH string was longer than 1024 bytes, and if the xgdsplot directory were listed near the end of the string. This limit has been increased to 2048.

If :cfg is not specified in the job file, xgdsplot would default to use gdsfile.cfg in the current directory, instead of using default values.
Fix requested by Randy You of Hyundai.

Text On/Off Button Action Fixed....

The only way to turn off text was to delete all 4 font selections. In this version, the text on/off toggle now works the way it should and turning on text will use the last set of font selections.

Gdsplt Plot.cfg File

The gdsplt plotting engine now supports the name of the plot.cfg file on the command line instead of always reading it from the current directory. Syntax is -pltcfg:myfile.cfg to the command line of gdsplt.
Needed for the new Cadence/Virtuoso SKILL interface....

Conditionally output clear signal
At the beginning of a plot, v1.09 will check if the plotter has an empty buffer. A CLEAR signal is sent to the plotter if the buffer is not empty. In previous versions, the CLEAR signal was always sent regardless of the buffer state. The CLEAR signal may hang the plotter if the buffer is already empty.

Fixed Memory Allocation Problem for Files > 1 GByte

Fixed Fill Pattern Dialog Box Display Problem

Progress Watch Cursor Added

Better Motif error handling under SunOS

/usr/lib/X11/nls and/or /usr/lib/X11/XKeysymDB

were not found, previous versions would crash without issuing an error message. The present version now issues a message describing the problem and suggests how to correct it. Much better behavior.

New Plotter Setup Tabbed Dialog

Removed False Warning/Error message

 "(4) Error occurred in executing xpltcfg/xgdsvu....".

Color Conflicts with Netscape Mitigated

  Warning: Cannot Allocate Default Colormap

Motif System Resources Defined

• MainFontBtn [font used for the button menu]
• Label_Font
• Text_Font

xgdsplot*foreground:      [tab]black
xgdsplot*background:      [tab]grey
xgdsplot.MainFontBtn:     [tab]-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--18-180-75-75-p-103-iso8859-1
xgdsplot.Label_Font:      [tab]-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--18-180-75-75-p-103-iso8859-1
xgdsplot.Text_Font:       [tab]-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--18-180-75-75-p-98-iso8859-1

Increased Max number of Structure to 64,000

[1] The maximum number of structures in a file can now be up to 64,000 (raised from 4096).

[2] GDSPLOT can save the structure list/pointer tree to disk now, instead of RAM if needed. While this slows things down, it does allow essentially unlimited space to hold this list/tree. To force GDSPLOT to save the list/tree to disk the user should go to the configuration menu and check the item "Extensive Referencing"

                           Fast (Use RAM)
Structure References
                         X Extensive Referencing (Use Disk)

Plot Tiling/Striping

Multiple Plots start with #1

Netscape and GDSPLOT Color Map Conflicts

  Warning: Cannot allocate colormap entry for "#2555ac71bc71

Alternately you launch Netscape with less colors, using -ncols 16, for example.

You can also run xgdsplot with the -bg grey command line switch. This forces grey as the background for xgdsplot (assuming netscape is using grey background). You can set this automatically by adding an entry to your .Xdefaults:

   xgdsplot*background:       grey
   xgdsplot*foreground:       black

XGDSPLOT Starts in Screen Center

Controlling Font Size and Style

Main Dialog Box Font


xgdsplot.MainFontBtn:   9x15

Fonts in other Dialog Boxes


xgdsplot*FontList:      9x15

Fixed Title in Line Color Dialog Box

Improved Usability of Line Type Dialog Box

Line types are changed to 4 groups of 8 line types, plus blank line type. Each group has a different line weight measured in pixels.

In addition, an index and pixel sizes of the selected line type are shown in the dialog box for easier reference.

Simplified Layer Parameters Dialog Box

Log File Window Size

No More wasted CPU Cycles while Idle

Support Magic AREF Behavior

New Extents Calculation Button

Calculate/Preview Plot Size

Plotting Origin

Output Mode

Bug fix: "signal 10" problem

In "Layer Fill/Color" module, duplicate layer definitions were generating duplicate table entries in the "Edit Layer Table" This has been fixed.

ACS_FLAGS=AREF#magic

Paper sizes specified in metric did not scale the margin by 2.54 resulting in incorrect margin calculations and clipping of the plot incorrectly. Problem was fixed. Only affected users who defined the page size in metric instead of inches.

Changed the default margin from 1 inch to 0.5 inch.

Added an environment variable called ACS_FLAGS; currently used to check for

AREF=magic

New Feature: Calculate Plot Size
For users plotting to a set scale factor we offer a function that calculates the plot extents by multiplying the scale factor times the extents of the selected structure. Because for large chips the structure extents calculation could take several minutes this function is not automatic but must be activated by pressing the F6 function key. Requested by Hyundai.

Recompiled GDSPLOT DOS with STACK 32768 to correct stack overflow.

An error message is written to the log file if GDSPLOT cannot locate a color.map file.

linetype    Description
 value
0           : no outline
1-8         : 1 pixel outline, 1 is solid
9-16        : 2 pixel outline, 9 is solid
17-24       : 3 pixel outline, 17 is solid
25-32       : 4 pixel outline, 25 is solid

Changes ported to DOS version of GDSPLOT

GDSPLOT ONLY searches the executable directory when no explicit path is given in the map file name; if a specific directory path is given, the named file is used no matter whether it exists or not.

GDSPLOT now plots text using the default font file, GDSVU.FNT when a new job is created. If the user specifed font is not found and the specified file name does not contain a directory path, the font file is searched in the executable directory.

These changes were made primarily to improve the "out of the box" usability of the program.

Disable auto-tiling and internal extents; the auto-tiling function had no way to warn the user of the number of plot strips required - if a user makes an error he has no way to know until plots start coming out. This can be re-enabled once the appropriate user interface is added.

Use T*.tmp temp file name specification.

Remove temp tile batch file.

RAM option was not used if user failed to open the Configure Program menu and hit F8 key to save the options.

Add support for auto-rotate where the user can tell GDSPLOT to find the most favorable orientation.

Added new 'W', 't' and 'r' keyword to cfg file to support tiling of plots onto multiple sheets.

Preload GDSVU.FNT at startup

Write a message to the plot.log file when the text font file cannot be found.

Implement dual-pipe operation in GDX I/O. This doubles program speed by moving data via memory pipes instead of file I/O.

Add piped message process to improve on-screen process message report update

Re-enable network license key release when gdsplot shell launch gdsplt engine

Reduce text size of legends to a more reasonable value.

Update user interface to enable control of plot header, layer legend and ruler display.

Segmented rotation did a double rotation when computing the front-end clipping limit. Fixed this.

Fixed a bug: AREF and SREF was missing data when
a) an AREF failed any restriction test, so it was exploded,
AND
b) the following AREF or SREF satisfied the tests

Default behavior of GDSPLOT modified to plot all layers instead of no layers. Makes it easier to use out-of-the-box.

Fixed a bug where the plot engine would hang while reading the job file if it encountered an undefined structure.

Add piped-information exchange code; this code will ask the rasterizer to return a XYScale value and use the value to validate AREF or SREF output

Add paper margin control info to GDX output