Cell Instance Finder Plug-in

updated February 8, 2018

A mask designer may need to find the insertion coordinates in a GDSII file of a specific cell or (or multiple cells) or find out how many times a specific cell is inserted in the GDSII file.

The Cell Instance Finder Plug-in allows the user to export a text file containing all the insertion coordinates of the specified cell.

Output is written as a text file and it includes information such as cell count, cell insertion point location, and cell name.

How it Works

Open a GDSII or OASIS layout and turn on the layer (or layers) of interest. Go to the Plugins pull down menu and select the Cell Instance Finder. The main dialog will come up and at this point you have several options in regards to the cell name.

• You can click on the cells you are interested in - they are listed alphabetically.
• You can click on the Select All option if you would like to get information on all cells.
• You can use regular expressions to select all the cell names that match the expression.

Example

Enter the regular expression ^PAD.*$ The output that will be produced from the test file looks like:

Xum           Yum           Widthum       Heightum      10 Symbols                                                            
0.000000      0.000000      99.000000     99.000000     PAD4MILS
0.000000      150.000000    99.000000     99.000000     PAD4MILS
150.000000    150.000000    99.000000     99.000000     PAD4MILS
150.000000    0.000000      99.000000     99.000000     PAD4MILS
-1.500000     79.500000     19.000000     19.000000     PADCONT
-1.500000     156.000000    19.000000     19.000000     PADCONT
196.500000    133.500000    19.000000     19.000000     PADCONT
148.500000    67.500000     19.000000     19.000000     PADCONT
115.500000    61.500000     19.000000     19.000000     PADCONT
115.500000    177.000000    19.000000     19.000000     PADCONT

Once you are done with the cell selection, hit the Apply button to create the text file. The Cell Instance Finder Plug-in will allow you to select the folder and the output file name.