Viewing the Layout Files

The cell layout is supplied as

1. Alliance format AP files which can be viewed with Alliance Graal.
2. Magic format MAG files which can be viewed with Magic.
3. CIF format files which can be viewed with any compatible editor like Alliance Dreal.
4. GDS format files which can be viewed with any compatible editor like Alliance Dreal.
5. GIF graphics which are used in the web data book.

The cells can be viewed by reading the CIF or GDS files into a Windows layout editor. Lasi7 for example comes with a utility cif2tlc7 which converts CIF to the Lasi7 TLC format. The separate CIF files have to be merged together first, and then each one manually read into lasi7 which will convert them to a TLC file.

This conversion process capitalises the first letter of the cell name, so cell an2v0x1.cif becomes An2v0x1.tlc. I suppose Wimdow$ users like this sort of thing. The full procedure is:

1. Copy the layer mapping on the right to your working directory as file mosis_layers.txt.
2. Use the script below (needs cygwin) to put all the CIF files for a library into one big file. This works from a working directory lasi/cells in parallel to magic/cif.

   #!/bin/bash # script which puts all cif files into one big file # which can then be read into cif2tlc7 and converted # to tlc format for lib in rgalib200 ssxlib200 sxlib200 vgalib200 vsclib200 vxlib200 wsclib200 do cells=$(ls ../../magic/cif/${lib}/*.cif) index=0 for cell in $cells do let "index=index+1" cat ${cell} | \ sed "s/^DS *\([^ ][^ ]*\) *\([^ ][^ ]*\) *\([^ ][^ ]*\) *$/DS $index \2 \3/" | \ sed "s/^C *\([^ ][^ ]*\)$/C ${index};/" | \ grep -v '^E' >> $$temp done echo End >> $$temp mv -f $$temp ${lib}.cif done

3. Run cif2tlc7 7 times, once for each library, and give the right source CIF file and destination directory. This is a Wondow$ program and can't be scripted, so you have to mouse click your way thru it to create the tlc files.
4. Lasi7 has a limited range of colours. I have selected the nearest ones to those used in Magic and Alliance. They can be found in file Lasi7.usf.

It's not so easy to actually use lasi7 to open a cell. The standard way would be to have an icon on the desktop and double click it. But then lasi7 considers the desktop to be the working directory and will start to sprinkle it with working files.
Instead

1. Go to the directory containing your lasi7.exe and copy it (2 clicks)
2. Go to the directory with the tlc files and paste as a shortcut (2 clicks)
3. Right click on the shortcut, then properties and change the Start in location to the directory containing the cells you want to view (5 clicks)
4. Double click on the shortcut to open lasi7 and click OK on the empty drawing dialog (3 clicks)
5. Double click again on the shortcut, accept the Creating New Lasi7.usf Setup File dialog, then accept the Empty Drawing dialog, then click Close on Load Cell or Create a New Cell (5 clicks)
6. Choose Import from the menu at the top, Browse, select your cell, Open, OK, OK again and view the cell (6 clicks)

This is a total of 23 mouse clicks to open your first cell. To compare with Alliance Graal for example, I would just type graal -l an2v0x05 to open a cell with 0 mouse clicks. I suppose Window$ users like clicking their mouse a lot.

The screenshot on the right shows a wsclib cell loaded into lasi7. It is actually taken running lasi7 under wine on Linux, but the Winfow$ shot should look the same.

The next library release will include layout views for all the cells in lasi7 tlc format.