Revision History for L-Edit PLOT

v5.41 12/2/2008

 Major upgrade after 8 years
Updated to work with L-Edit version 13.0

Added Plot Preview Support

Added Flex licensing

Added USB Safenet licensing

Tanner UPI Key is no longer supported.

v4.14 4/26/2000

 Change temporary file name
The plot macro does not work directly with L-EDIT TDB file. It actually asks the L-EDIT program to generate a GDSII intermediate file first, and then the macro plots the GDSII file. In previous versions, the name of the GDSII file is devired from the name of the TDB file with the extension .GGD. This extension is now changed to ._GDS.

Fix Setting Problem
Starting from v4.13, registry is used to store plot parameter settings. However, v4.13 has a bug that would only read from the registry, but it would not save new settings back to the registry. This would cause any kind of arbitrary problem including program crash. This problem is now fixed.

Fix -st option
-st option is used to force TEXT entity to use 'black' color when the normal TEXT color is 'white' (see v3.46 doc). This option was broken. It is fixed now.

v4.13 4/19/2000

 Update for L-EDIT v8.2
This plot macro is a standalone GUI. In previous version, the macro returns control back to L-EDIT as soon as the GUI dialog is displayed. When user select one of the "plot" operation, a GDSII file is created from L-EDIT database. In L-EDIT v8.2, this would cause L-EDIT to pop up a GDSII export status window which would result in an inactive menu bar. This "status" window can be avoided if the macro does not return control back to L-EDIT. In this version, the macro will stay in an idle loop until the GDSII file is created.

Default Plot Configuration There is a default configuration file in LIB sub-directory named LIB\gdsplot.cfg. It is supposed to provide default plot settings for a new plot operation. However, in previous version, if user never selects the "Configure Options" button (the first button in the GUI dialog) this default file was ignored. This problem is fixed in this version. Regardless user selects the "Configure Options" button or not, the default gdsplot.cfg file is read to provide default plot settings.

v4.07 10/21/1999

 Fix Plot Window bug
GDSII file with grid of 1 would generate a plot 10x too small when "Plot View" or "Plot Window" option is used.

Fix "Exception" Crash Problem
In v4.03, this program uses gscan.exe utility to get Cell extents. If any error occur during gscan.exe execution (including gscan.exe program not found), the macro crashes L-EDIT. This version will generate a meaningful error and quit gracefully.

Filter Layer Legend
Previous version will generate the entire Layer legend even if there is no data on some of the layers. This version will plot the legends of the layers on which data exist.

v4.03 5/6/1999

 Rewrite Engine
This version rewrites the database. Main differences are:
  • Database is reduced. Only SREF and AREF elements are stored in the memory. Boundary, path and text elements are read directly from the data file on demand. This update elminates the loading time at the beginning, but adds plotting time along the way. Small data files will see little or no speed improvement. Big data files that would have required disk-swapping in previous versions will save the redundant loading time at the beginning.
  • SREF database is sorted to provide speed improvement.
  • Legend header and ruler generation is done by the rasterizers.

Fix Legend
Legend box was plotted incorrectly if more than 3 rows of legend boxes were generated.

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.

v3.48 4/30/1999

 Added support for LEDIT 8.0.

v3.47 12/17/1998

 Fix "Macro Exception" Error
If the ACS.KEY string was invalid or missing the last two "SP" characters, the plot macro would display the error message:

Macro Exception
and would take down the L-Edit program with it. Very bad behavior. Version 3.47 will generate a meaningful error message about invalid key codes and continue running in DEMO mode.

v3.46 7/30/1998

 Floating License Compatibility
This version upgrades the floating license internals to work with Tanner's Lserv 6.0. Previous versions of the PLOT macro were working with the Lserv 4.0 license server but Lserv 4.0 and Lserv 6.0 could not coexist on the same machine.

Note: this approach requires that we use IP address locking with the license manager so end users will have to provide us the IP address of the machine running the license manager....Not the results of the Tanner echoid....

v3.45a 7/30/1998

 floating license install
The new installation copies lsapiw32.dll file into the \windows\system directory. This lsapiw32.dll is the problem file which causes the "llserv.dll missing required dll" to appear when trying to run from a network floating license.

v3.45 4/23/1998

 Epson Plot Driver Added
Added a plotter driver for the Epson Color Stylus family of inkjet plotters.

General Purpose (GDI) plotter driver added
Added a general purpose plotter driver (GDI based) that should support any raster plotter with a Windows plotter driver. This is not as efficient as the native plotter drivers but will enable users with previously unsupported plotters to get good output.

GDSII bug fix
Fixed a bug that resulted in bad GDSII reading under certain combinations of GDSII file size and structure locations due to incorrect calculation of a pointer.

Version Jump
Incremented the version to 3.45 in order to keep it synchronized with the UNIX versions of gdsplot since they share the same plotting engines and updates.

Product ID Changed
Product ID has been modified to 3530. Anyone who updates from previous versions will need new key strings....

Tanner Install Error
Notified Tanner EDA that the install they have written for the plot macro has an error. It should update certain configuration files such as preset.cfg so that the pointers include the proper path. We cannot fix this, since Tanner writes the Install for their CD.

v3.37 2/18/1998

 Floating License Manager Added
Added support for Lserv4 license manager. The Lserv4 license manager can run on both Windows 95 and Windows NT platforms and is Y2K compliant ....

v3.35 2/18/1998

 First version released for Tanner Distribution
This is the first version of the PLOT macro that was released for general consumption via Tanner EDA. It has been tested together with L-Edit 7.0 to be released in March 98.

InstallShield
Installation now uses Install Shield's wizard and automatically checks for presence of required MFC DLL's and installs them as necessary. This version also attempts to detect whether L-Edit 6.6 or 7.0 is installed and then loads the proper DLLs - though we expect that very few 6.6 versions will ever be used in the field.


Plot Data Sheet

Price

Download

Tanner Index

Artwork Home

ARTWORK CONVERSION SOFTWARE, INC.       Company Profile
417 Ingalls St., Santa Cruz, CA 95060    Tel (831) 426-6163     Fax 426-2824    email: info@artwork.com