The following notes describe changes, fixes and enhancements to GDSPLOT/W. Where version numbers are skipped it is normally due to the fact that the version never left the development area.

Software is updated to support FLEXLM licensing. Customers who are under support and have a floating license, can now download and use the software for all platforms at no extra charge.

Fixes the crashes that were occuring in 5.11, related to bitmap copying (as result of the incompatiblity between the gdsplt front-end and the rasterizers).

Implemented a new bitmap copy routine that has the potential to speed up rasterization of some types of files by a factor of 10!. The new bitmap copy routine is much more flexible about which structures can be saved as a bitmap when used repeatedly; files that are heavily nested with "large" cells see the most improvement.

Changed the way that we define the plotter's color palettes - now using the native RTL palette; this enables the plotter to save some computation time for each data pass resulting in much faster on-the-fly plotting. We have seen actual plot speedups of 4X on the HP 650 and 750 plotters. i.e. a plot that the HP650 previously needed 30 minutes to push out, now comes out in 7-8 minutes.

Array Mode
Older versions would always plot the array in full no matter what the user setting is. This has been fixed.

Array Mode - Outer Row/Column
Added array mode control to plot just the outer row and column.

Map File Format
This version uses map file format which are interchangable between Xgdsplot/Unix, Qckvu/w, Qckvu/Unix and Gdsplot/w.

Map File To Use
If there is a job file, the map file saved in the job file is used. Then, if the map file is provided in the command line, (e.g. wgdsplot.exe a.gds b.map), this map file will be used. If no map file specified in the command line, check if gdsplot.map exists in the working directory. If not, copy gdsplot.map from installation directory to the working directory and this is the map file to use.

Layers List Limit
The lists of include and exclude layers now has a maximum length of 8192 characters, increased from 256.

Online Help
This version has an updated help system with new help information available.

Fill Patterns
This version ships with extra fill patterns which look like Cadence/Mentor Graphics fill patterns.

Plotter Settings
Plotter settings are saved to plot.cfg in the registry. No more plot.cfg in the C:\ root directory which addresses customers who have no permission to the C:\ root directory. Old plotter settings from previous versions are automatically preserved when this new version is run for the first time. No need to set up the program again from scratch.
Same is true for the pltcfg.ini which stores the different plotter information.

Import/Export Plot.cfg File
Users can import settings from a file to the registry. Settings can also be exported to a file.

Hidden Window
Under Windows 2000, older versions of Gdsplot starts up with the window hidden under other programs. It has been changed to always show on top when Gdsplot is started.

Crash After Scanning GDS File
Older versions might crash under Windows 2000 after the selected GDS file is scanned or after the "Want to rescan it?" message. This has been fixed.

After Plotting Error Message - "The file name is incorrect"
Older versions might pop up this message after plotting and no output is generated. This would happen if the output to file text area is clicked even though no output file name is typed in. This has been fixed.

Plot Output File
Older versions do not plot to output file name with spaces. The output file name is truncated. This has been fixed.

Layers Plotted In Header
The layers plotted are not printed in the header in older versions when not all layers are specified to plot. This has been fixed.

Error Message - "Cannot return key for ACS352O"
After plotting for a long time, older versions would pop up an error message saying "Cannot return key for ACS352O". This has been fixed.

Port To Windows
All the fixes since 4.04 are now ported to Windows EXCEPT over 2GB support and datatype discrimination.

Fix legend bug
If legends and/or header strings are enabled, but ruler is disabled, previous version would generate a blank page.

Fix Clipping
The clipping bug occured when the following conditions were true:

• plotting a portion of the drawing (window plot) and data exists over the right edge of the plot window
• legends are required and the total legend width is wider than the drawing window.

Tighten Reference Structure Database
References are stored more efficiently reducing by 30 bytes per reference the amount of space required.

Buckets are introduced into the sorting function to minimize unnecessary comparison

Special SREF database to minimize duplicate data and comparison AREF's are not sorted as they use a high speed bitmap copy function.

Bug Fix for Undefined Structures
GDSII file that contained references to undefined structures would put v4.00 in infinite loop or crash the engine. This condition is now detected.

Add Progress Percentage
Added a progress percentage output indicating work done on the top structure.

Database size is reduced. Only SREF and AREF elements are stored in RAM. Boundary, path and text elements are read directly from the GDSII file on demand. This elminates the loading time at the beginning, but adds some additional processing time at the back end.

Small GDSII files will see little or no speed improvement but the large files that would have extensive required disk-swapping will run much faster overall.

the -vref option, reqd for very large files is now obsolete.

SREF and AREF
SREF and AREF objects without STRAN would cause confusion in previous version, and the reference extents calculation was incorrect. This is now fixed.

New Epson Stylus Printer Driver!

We've added a high speed RIP for the Epson family of Color Stylus printers/plotters. This will enable our users who have purchased the low cost and the B size Epson color inkjets to print from GDSPLOT and GDSVU/W (actually from all of our viewers!)

New Windows GDI Printer Driver

This is a generic printer driver that is able to print to many of the devices we previously couldn't support. It works by RIPing the plot into a Windows BMP file which is then pumped through the Windows GDI (Graphic Device Interface) plotter drivers. This means that previously unsupported plotters such as the HP1000 (B size color) and Lexmark lasers are now supported through this GDI driver.

Fixed GDSII Processing Bug

The GDSII input module had a bug that would read in incorrect gdsii data; This bug only occured under rare combinations of file size/structure reference and was due to a incorrect file position calculation.

Fixed bug in the GDI printer driver

If the GDI driver did not have enough RAM to image the entire page it would use a banded approach. Unfortunately the banding routine could crash. This has been fixed.

We updated the floating license manager to Version 4.1 from 3.2a for three reasons:
1. This version is Y2K compatible.
2. This version actually works much better than 3.2a
3. This version supports W95 license servers.

Note that Lserv4 keycodes are not the same as Lserv 3.2a keycodes.

Add -pltcfg command line option to allow user to specify an alternate plot.cfg file; default is to use c:\plot.cfg. This does not affect the great majority of users. It is primarily for applications where the GDSPLOT engine is called by another application.

Allow context sensitive help in plotter setup dialog.

Plotter Drivers updated

HP DJ870C and HP DJ1200C drivers added to RTL output.

plotting in demo mode

Supporting long directory names with spaces

Net License Bug Fix

Support SPACES in filename and structure name

Fixed Plotting Bug

A bug in the rasterizer caused some plots to be shifted and wrapped around the page. This has been fixed.

Support for MAGIC AREFs has been added; a new "Magic" check box appears in the Configure | Options dialog; if checked, the AREF's are plotted per Magic's spec; not Calma's.

Fixed a bug that corrupted the layer color/fill selection map file.

Black Layer Legend Boxes

Fixed a bug that incorrectly generated black legend boxes.

Fixed a bug that generate bad plots from GDSII files using a resolution of 1.0. For example a GDSII file in units of microns with resolution equal to one micron did not plot correctly.

Speed up RTL and PCL plotting by a factor of 1.5; removed multithreading routines - these consumed more overhead on single processor CPUs.

Added "Work Dir" check box on OpenGDS dialog

Fixed an autoscaling bug that crashed the program under certain circumstances.

Fixed a memory management bug that locked up memory resource from the system.

Communicate layer color/fill settings between wgdsplot and gdsvu program.