Artwork's GDSFILT program consists of two main parts: The user interface (gdsfilt.exe) and the actual computation engine (gdsfilte.exe) and its supporting DLLs.

To use the gdsfilt engine from another application you need to know how to call the engine directly. We show a simple example below.

Running GDSFILTE.EXE

Consider the following example case:

You have a file called demo1.gds whose top structure is TOP. You want to produce a new GDSII file called pad_ring.gds and extract only layer 8 from demo1.gds (this layer contains the passivation openings for the die pads). You want the output file to be flat -- i.e. there is no need to preserve the structure hierachy in demo1.gds.

The command line that will do that is shown below. (To save space we assume that both demo1.gds and pad_ring.gds are located in the "current" directory -- otherwise we would have to use a full path to specify their locations.)

gdsfilte.exe demo1.gds pad_ring.gds TOP -unixcmdline -i8 -prune -explode

where

    gdsfilte.exe                 full path to gdsfilte (engine)

    demo1.gds                    input file name 

    pad_ring.gds                 output file name

    TOP                          name of input file's top structure

    -unixcmdline                 run as if from a UNIX command line

   -q                implies Quiet mode.
   -pause            do not pause at banner.
   -prune            trim off all empty trees.
   -memstats[:mm]    Output memory usage & run time info
                         [every mm minutes, default = 15]
   -prefs            preserve all references.

   -iM,N,...         Include only layers M,N,... on output.
   -xM,N,...         Exclude only layers M,N,... on output.
   -IM,N,...         Include only datatypes M,N,... on output.
   -XM,N,...         Exclude only datatypes M,N,... on output.
   -lyrM:N,...       Remap layer range M to N.
   -dtpM:N,...       Remap datatype range M to N.
   -mapM%N:m%n,... Remap layer:datatype(s) M:N to m:n.

   -maxref:M         drop REFs after M sref or arefs.
   -max:M            expect at least M structures. (2048) default.
   -min:W            discard paths and text with width less than W.
   -tmag:M           discard text with magnitude greater than M.
   -short:X          remove path and boundary segments shorter than X.
   -textonly         output TEXT only. 
                 (implies -explode)
   +text             don't drop TEXT.  
                 (implies -explode)
   -maxext:X         remove geometries with extents more than X. 
                 (implies -explode)
   -minext:X         remove geometries with extents less than X. 
                 (implies -explode)
   -h2w:X            remove geometries with height to width ratios more than X. 
                 (implies -explode)
   -w2h:X            remove geometries with width to height ratios more than X. 
                 (implies -explode)
   -aratio:X         remove geometries with area coverage less than X. 
                 (implies -explode)
   -maxvert:X        remove geometries with more than X vertices. 
                 (implies -explode)
   -strict[!]        filter stream data to adhere better to strict GDSII.
   -fpchk[:N]        generate floating point (FP) statistics (N is OR of 1,2,4
                       corresponding to HEADER, REF, TEXT info).
   -names            repair all dubious structure names. (exclusive)
   -rename fn        use file fn to do name translations.

   -remove fn        remove structures listed in file fn.

   -only fn          file fn holds list of the 'only' structures to be output.

   -tech fn          read the tech file fn.
   -netcfg fn        read the netex config file fn.
   -netinfo fn       use file fn for net names.
   -netdebug         run in netdebug mode.
   -flag_multi_netnm flag and do not rename nets with multiple names.
   -merge_nets       do not merge named nets.
   -add_net_text     insert net names into named nets.
   -printnetinfo:L   use level L as net text logging.
   -netxplode f topstr    generate netinfo file from f and its topstr
   -netalias fn      create netId structure alias file fn.

   -phase[A|B]       run in netex phase A or B modes.

   -lc               change all strings to lower case. (implies -names)
   -uc               change all strings to upper case. (implies -names)
   -unfold           "fix" dubious paths.
   -explode          flatten the structure hierarchy.

   -merge f1 f2 ... fn  merge files f1, f2 ... fn with . (exclusive)
   -add f1 f2 ... fn    add files f1, f2 ... fn with . (exclusive)
   -blend f1 f2 ... fn  blend files f1, f2 ... fn with . (exclusive)
   -combine newtop s1 ... sn  insert structure topstr, s1 ... sn into newtop.
                              (blend not allowed)
   -offset X0,Y0 X1,Y1 ... Xn,Yn insert structure topstr,
                s1 ... sn using the offsets. (combine only)

The resulting GDSII file,pad_ring.gds, will only contain data on layer 8 and will be flat - i.e. there will be only a single top structure that contains all the entities from layer 8.