Revision History

Changes and Enhancements to the GDSII, OASIS, OA Layout Viewer are listed below:

This page summarizes the changes and fixes to each version of the Qckvu3.

Version 3.20 06/12/09

This version supports the Geometry Walker feature plug in tool. It allows the user to import a text file with xy coordinates, and zoom in to each coordinate.

This version of Qckvu3 has support for plugins made by both Artwork or the end users themselves. Artwork currently ships a few plugins:

1. Extract GDSII (GDSII to GDSII and OASIS to GDSII. No Open Access support yet).
2. CSV Error Coordinates Reader (with sample code).
3. Geometry Walker (separately licensed).
4. Care Area Wizard (separately licensed).
5. Smart Die (separately licensed).

In previous versions, when grabbing a rubber band and the y coordinate of the mouse goes beyond the drawing area, the y coordinate would overflow and the picture might become blank or no info data is reported. This has been fixed.

Version 3.18 03/01/09

This version improves by a factor of 5X to 10X the cell highlighting for files input as OASIS.

Version 3.15 02/04/09

Fixed the scrolling bug where the checkbox for Delete/Move does not move with the scroll

Version 3.13 12/23/08

Previous versions of the software would halt (or crash) when reading an OASIS file that had a text string including a new line character. (Technically, this is forbidden by the OASIS spec). This version now reads such data correctly and also supports the CR character.

previous versions were ignoring GDSII record type - BOX. This version now reads them and treats them the same as a boundary.

Version 3.11 11/21/08

This version includes some html based help manual incorporated into the help pull down menu and Help buttons in various dialogs. It launches the system browser for opening html files.

This version has a new Extract GDSII plugin that enables a user to select a polygonal shaped region to extract instead of a simple rectangular region. The user can also specify whether the program should clip any entities which cross the region boundary or extract the entire entity.

Version 3.10 11/21/08

Previous versions might crash under rare occasions when a tooltip popped up. This has been fixed.

Version 3.09 11/13/08 CA Wizard 1.05 11/13/08

The nesting levels display control in the cell reference dialog in Qckvu3 now has a list box of nesting levels 0 to 20. User can select multiple levels to draw cell references boxes and labels.

The "Load File To Memory" setting in the "Select GDSII" and "Select OASIS" dialogs is now remembered from session to session. Load On or Off status is displayed in the text area when opening a file.

Version 3.07 10/15/08

Previous versions might hang or crash with X Windows error after picking an object when cell outline or label at level 0 (top cell) is turned on. This has been fixed.

Plug in info mode now also works when walking around the vertices of a boundary or path.

Version 3.06 10/15/08

Added the array control/filter to draw array reference extents as outline, extents outline for the single references on the outer row and column, or extents outline for all single references of the array. By Default array processing = full.

Use can now click on the Pick button next to the cell name text box to pick cell name using mouse info to identify references. The name of the reference queried will then be shown in the cell name text box.

New highlight size control. Single pixel outline for highlighting was very difficult to discern in earlier versions. Bigger highlights are drawn in outline and the outline width in pixels is controllable. Smaller highlights are drawn in a minimum sized filled rectangles where the size in pixels is controllable. The highlight size slider controls both outline and fill sizes.

• Level 1 is true to the original data with outlines drawn in 1 pixel and small references drawn at original size.
• Level 2 draws outline in 2 pixels, and small references in 4 pixels.
• Level 3 draws outline in 3 pixels, and small references in 6 pixels.
• Level 4 draws outline in 4 pixels, and small references in 8 pixels.
• Level 5 draws outline in 5 pixels, and small references in 10 pixels.
• Max is level 10.
• Default highlight size level is 3.

This slider also controls the size of the areas to be drawn after the highlights are added to a selection.

The selected cell's width and height are shown in the "Last Highlighted Cell" info panel. When the cell is highlighted, the highlights count is shown.

Default values for parents, nesting, array, window mode, highlight size are located in $HOME/.artwork/cawizard.Xdefaults

When single reference rule is turned on, it automatically turns on pick mode. Use the mouse to info data and references will be auto highlighted. Click pick again to enter pick mode (if the mode has been changed to other zoom/info mode like zoom window.)Array reference in single reference rule is always drawn as array extents outline.

Selection dialog now shows if a rule is a single reference rule or not. For single ref rule, there are no parents, nesting, array and window filter settings displayed; these fields remain empty.

In the selection dialog, the top cell information is taken out since all rules of all selections belong to the same top cell.

An export button is added to go to the next step of exporting selections to files.

Selections can be exported using the specified layer, datatype and cell name.

Exports are output to a directory which is selected when "Export..." is clicked. For now, it generates the specified GDSII output file, mappings.csv and config.csv (the 2 csv contain no meaningful information for this release).

Boolean operation is fully functional with grow, unionize and shrink. Only one gap parameter is available - i.e. Xgap = Ygap

Registration Marks is not yet functional.

Version 3.03 08/27/08

Various Qckvu2 Functions Added:
1. Cell reference outline and label size and insertion controls.
2. Different shx font support.
3. Export GDSII cell names or cell names in a tree format to a text file.
4. View transformation.
5. Find cell references with find previous function.
6. Find text insertions with find previous function.
7. Extract GDSII plug in for both clipping and no clipping control.

New Functions Added:
1. Zoom in and out while in measure mode and polygon area mode.
2. Info window area, in addition to info point click, in the same info mode.
3. Info previous object (in addition to next object).
4. Double click to zoom home in all zoom and info modes except when specifying a polygonal area (where double click is used to close the polygon).
5. OpenAccess custom and STD vias are now supported.

Version 3.02 08/1/08

This version supports Ciranova Python PCell (PyCell).
To setup the environment variables for Qckvu3 to support PyCell, users need to run the setup script:

[Ciranova PyCell Studio install path]/quickstart/bashrc

or

[Ciranova PyCell Studio install path]/quickstart/tcshrc

OpenAccess selection is now controlled using 1 or more OpenAccess library definition files (lib.defs). Libraries/cells/views specified in the selected lib.defs file(s) are available to be selected for opening.

The cell dialog now shows the library and view for each cell. Cells can be defined in different external libraries, and cells can have multiple layout views.
Cells in the selected library and view when opening are listed as a simple cell name. Cells in other libraries and views are listed as cell/lib/view. e.g.

parent
|__ child1/lib1/view4
|__ child2
|__ child3/lib2/view4

where parent and child2 are in the selected lib and view. lib1, lib2 and view4 are external libraries and different layout view.

More Qckvu Features Have Been Added To Qckvu3
View Settings
Preferences
Zoom To XY Coordinates
Grid Points
Save View As GIF
Command Line Option -cell:cname (and -struct:cname)

Version 3.01 06/27/08

This version now supports both DM Systems OpenAccess libraries, FileSys and Turbo.

Previous version of Qckvu3 would not open OpenAccess libraries which the user does not have write permission to the OpenAccess library directory. This is now changed and write permission is only necessary for Turbo DM System OpenAccess libraries, not FileSys DM System libraries.

Previous version of Qckvu3 would not open OpenAccess libraries without a tech database or libraries which Qckvu3 cannot find the corresponding tech database.
This has been changed to allow opening OpenAccess libraries without a tech database and the default DBU per UU and unit are 1000 and UM respectively if no tech database is found.
Qckvu3 uses the tech database inside an OpenAccess library directory; if that doesn't exist, then it searches for tech libraries in the file lib.defs in the startup directory of Qckvu3. So user might want to start Qckvu3 from the directory where lib.defs resides.

Potential warnings about PCell will be shown to the user after the OpenAccess open process is done and user can choose to continue to view or cancel the open and close the OpenAccess.