Overlay is a stand alone utility for merging multiple GDSII Layout files. It uses a simple GUI (based on QT) that allows the user to quickly select the files, select the top level structure to use for each input file and to select by layer. The output file's layers can be mapped or shifted from the input file's layers in order to avoid data collisions. The insertion coordinate of each file to merge can be user defined.

Features and Functions

Layer Selection/Mapping - the user can specify which layers to pass to the output and can re-map layer numbers to avoid data collisions..

Cell Name Collision - In order to avoid accidental re-definition of cells that share a common name, all cells in the output file are modified to indicate which file they originated from.

Insertion Control - Each file to be merged can be assigned a unique XY insertion coordinate. This allows the user to "shift" data as needed.

User Interface - The features of the user interface are documented in this section.

Program Characteristics - In this section we describe the rules the Overlay program follows when merging GDSII.