Smart Die is integrated into AutoCAD. It is launched from a menu pulldown. The first step is to ue the Import GDSII to select and import the GDSII data.

Import GDSII will only run for an empty drawing. If for some reason you cannot open an empty drawing due to a start up script, follow these instructions.

Import GDS Dialog

Specify the file to import. Press Scan to get a listing of all structures and layers in the file. Select the top level structure and the layer(s) you wish to extract using the drop down list boxes. Press OK.

If you need to view the GDSII file you can press View (but you will also need a GDSVU license that is not part of Smart Die.)

The Die Pad Ring

Here you can see the die pad ring that was extracted from the GDSII stream file.

No one would want to have to extract all these coordinates manually - fortunately the next module, DieClean, will do this in seconds.

In some cases your GDSII file may contain the net names. Die Clean can read the net names provided:
The insertion point of the text is inside the die pad boundary.
The height of the text is smaller than the size of the die pad (about 10% of the pad height).

Die Clean

Name of the die

The size of the die

Where Pad 1 is located

Direction to Number Pads

Name of the die

Hit OK and Smart Die will write out an AIF file that has each pad's number, coordinates and a dummy netname.

If the GDSII file had contained netnames as strings of text under the die pads then these could have been extracted also.

Done

In a few seconds you will see the message at left. To examine the AIF file that was just created click on the View button.

AIF Netlist

The Smart Die program has saved the die pad coordinates as "staggered_die.aif". By pressing the View button, Smart Die opens up the file using the Wordpad program. This data can now be used for designing a new package - both Cadence APD [requires AIF2APD] and Encore can read in the AIF format.