Description
A client of Artwork requested the development of a system that enables the rapid acquisition of targets from the CAD database used to describe IC layouts. The information about the target is returned as a bitmap.
The client's app is written in C# (.NET) and they wanted their application to be able to open a GDSII or OASIS file using Artwork's Qckvu3 layout viewer. The layout viewer will enable the user to select a region containing the alignment target.
On the App Side
Each engineer runs an application that enables inspection recipe creation. One of the recipe requirements is to provide a number of bitmaps each showing an alignment mark region so that the inspection machine can identify the alignment marks.
The inspection engineer selects the GDSII or OASIS file that contains the layout of the device. The path to the file is passed to Artwork's Qckvu3 (GDSII/OASIS viewer) so that the layout can be displayed.
The inspection engineer is able to view, pan, select layers and zoom in. When he/she has identified an alignment region, a mouse click is made and a cross/box is displayed on screen. Assuming this is the desired location (for the center of the clip) the engineer confirms it and the basic information needed to generate a bitmap can then be sent to the server. This information includes:
name and location of the GDSII/OASIS file
layer or layers that should be processed
- top level cell to process
X,Y coordinate of the clip
Width and Height of the Clip
Either pixel size or DPI
On the Server Side
The server waits and listens for a rasterization request from any of the recipe apps. The request is accompanied by a link to the GDSII/OASIS file that should be processed along with the clip request information.
Upon receiving the request, the recipe server calls Artwork's raster library, instructs it to open the specified file and to create a bitmap per the clip parameters. This bitmap is then passed back to the Inspection database server.