GDS2ASCII is a utility program that converts the binary GDSII stream format into an ASCII file. Once in ASCII the designer can use a variety of powerful tools written in languages such as awk, sed and perl to check and modify his file without the need for a CAD system.

The ASCII file can then be reconverted into GDSII stream using the ASCII2GDS module.

Both programs are command line tools and designed to be called either from scripts or from other programs.

Supported GDSII Elements

GDS2ASCII supports the following GDSII record types:

GDS_BGNLIB          library

GDS_BGNSTR        begin structure

GDS_BOUNDARY   boundary

GDS_BOX               box

GDS_ENDSTR        end structure

GDS_NODE            node

GDS_PATH             path

GDS_SREF             structure reference

GDS_TEXT              string of text

Output Formats

GDS2ASCII writes two different output formats:

ACS standard - a verbose format, easy to read and parse.

Compressed Shape - a compressed version designed to minimize file size.

Supported Platforms