Each output file contains the geometry for a cell in a defined grid, including some possible overlap with neighboring grid cells. The l, b, r, t define a rectangle, in microns, which is the area over which the grid will be defined. This is typically the bounding box of the top-level cell. If all four entries are set to 0, the bounding box will be computed. The area can be smaller than the bounding box, which will truncate the grid, however objects are not clipped to this boundary.
The x0, and y0 (in microns) set the grid origin relative to the origin of the top level cell. The w and h (in microns) set the periodicity of the grid, i.e., the unit cell width and height. The bw, in microns, is the amount by which the grid cell is bloated before geometry is extracted and written. This must be positive or zero.
The bname is a cell path name, with an extension which gives the type of file to create. One of the following extensions must be provided:
.cgx CGX outputThe files will be named in the form basename_X_Y.ext, where the .ext is the extension supplied, and X,Y are integer indices representing the grid cell. The 0,0 grid cell has its lower left corner at x0,y0 before bloating by the border width, and the indices increase with increasing x,y. If negative, the character `m' is used instead of a minus sign. Each file will consist of a single cell, whose name is tha name of the file with the extension stripped, containing the geometry for that grid cell.
.cif CIF output
.gds GDSII output
.oas OASIS output
In addition to the channel output files, an Xic cell file is written, using the basename without the extension, that references each of the channel files. Opening this cell will open all of the channel files, showing all geometry from the original file (memory limits permitting).
This function reads data directly from the source file to minimize memory use. All files are opened and written in parallel. The user may encounter system limitations on the number of file descriptors open simultaneously. The function returns 1 on success, 0 otherwise.