The NetTrace server is intended to extract out all geometries from a GDSII/OASIS design that are electrically connected. It does not rely on any external information other than a layer stackup which defines metal and via layers.

NetTrace works together with QIS (for a stand alone batch oriented net extraction see our NETEX program. A client which already works with QIS need only add a few additional API's in order to add interactive net tracing functionality.

QIS handles the opening and extracting of data from a GDSII or OASIS files -- NetTrace handles the computations needed to figure out which entities are electrically connected based on a user provided starting point.

NetTrace gets the geometries it needs directly from QIS. While NetTrace and QIS communicate via a TCP/IP socket for command and control, the actual geometry data (which can be very large) is passed via a pool of shared memory.