MBS2TIFF Command Line Operation

MBS2TIFF/GDS can be executed from the command line. A typical application might be to convert the MEBES data received from the wafer the fab back to GDSII to compare the fractured data against the original source.



MBS2TIFF/GDSII Command Line Syntax

 


mbs2tiff [options] input_file output_file
where  
mbs2tiff Name of the executable. A full path may be specified if the executable is not in the current working directory.
-nogui Run in comamnd line mode. No mbs2tiff dialog box will open. On Windows, the progress dialog box will open; however this can be disabled with -silent option.
-silent Disables progress messages showing percent complete. Use this option to run the program in the background; only a status messageg will be generated upon completion.
-win:llx,lly,urx,ury Defines an extraction window in microns (MEBES units).
-levels:l1,l2,l3 Specify levels in the job deck to be extracted. l1,l2,l3 are the level numbers. This argument is valid only when the MEBES input is a job deck.
-tiff create TIFF bitmap output. [default]
-gds create GDSII stream output.
-bitmap create Windows BMP output.(This option only valid for mbs2tiff running Windows)
-log:LOGFILENAME Specify log file LOGFILENAME to be created.
-width:WIDTH Specify output width equal to WIDTH in pixels. Default = 1000 pixels. valid only for TIFF/BMP output format.
-height:HEIGHT output height equal to HEIGHT in pixels. Default = 1000 pixels. Valid only for TIFF/BITMAP output format.
-union:POLYNUM By default, the mbs2tiff/gds program does not join touching MEBES trapezoids when producing a GDSII file. This is the fastest mode of operation but the resulting GDSII file is much larger than necessary because of GDSII's inefficient storage of boundary data.

The -union:POLYNUM directs the program to read in the specified number of trapezoids and unionize them into larger more complex polygons. This will greatly decrease the size of the resulting GDSII stream file.

If the value of POLYNUM is specified too large, the time required perform the unionization can become enormous since it is exponentially related to the number of input vertices. Our experiments with a few files indicate a value of 500 for POLYNUM gives reasonably good compression without a large penalty in conversion speed. This parameter is valid only for GDSII output format.


Batch File Example

A user has 4 MEBES files he wishes to convert to GDSII stream data. This can be either by running the same script file over and over or by using one script to call another. The example below was run on Windows but can be modified slightly to work on Linux or Unix.

The first script, convert.bat, contains the command line to launch mbs2tiff, the required arguments and variables for the input and output file names and log files. The -nogui and -silent arguments prevent any messages or windows from popping open. The -gds argument instructs the program to create GDSII stream output and the -union:500 argument instructs mbs2tiff/gds to unionize 500 input trapezoids into larger boundaries in GDSII if possible. The input file variable is set to %1 and the output will use the input file with the suffix .gds.


C:\wcad\Mbs2Tiff\mbs2tiff.exe -nogui -silent -gds -union:500 -log:%1.log %1 %1.gds

The second script is called run.bat and calls convert.bat over and over again, each time passing it a new input file. The net result is 4 GDSII files from the 4 input MEBES files.


call convert 4n01.mbs
call convert 4p01.mbs
call convert 4p00.mbs
call convert 4p01.mbs

On UNIX based systems, the call command is not necessary.





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