Ulf Griesmann, 2008 - 2020 ulf.griesmann@nist.gov, ulfgri@gmail.com

The GDSII library, or database, format has become an important industry standard for the description of nano-structure designs that are fabricated with either photo- or electron lithography - despite being poorly documented. GDSII library files are used to define the layout of integrated circuits, MEMS devices, nano-structured optics, and so on. This toolbox of functions for MATLAB or Octave can be used to create, read, and modify files in GDSII library format. The toolbox is particularly useful when a layout is the result of numerical modeling as is often the case, e.g., for nano-structured optics, photonic devices, or micro-fluidic devices. MATLAB or Octave are efficient tools for post-processing of modeling results and for creating a lithographic layout as input to the fabrication process. The toolbox can also be used to modify GDSII layout files using scripts, e.g. for merging of several layout files. Layouts can be inspected with the excellent free layout viewer KLayout.

Most functions in this toolbox are in the Public Domain (see Notice_and_Disclaimer.pdf), with the following exceptions:

• The library that is used by the toolbox for Boolean polygon algebra, Clipper, is written by Angus Johnson (see: Boolean/clipper.hpp and Boolean/clipper.cpp), and is subject to the Boost Software license 1.0.

• The functionality for creating Datamatrix codes in Structures/private/datamatrixmex.c is subject the GNU Public License version 2.

• The function for the conversion of floating point numbers to the format used in GDSII files, Basic/gdsio/convert_float_gcc.h, is subject to the GNU Public License version 3. Note that this file is only used when the toolbox is compiled with GCC. Otherwise, a generic conversion function 'convert_float_generic.h' is used instead, which is in the Public Domain.

New releases of the toolbox can also be downloaded from:

https://sites.google.com/site/ulfgri/numerical/gdsii-toolbox

Additional documentation is available on:

https://sites.google.com/site/ulfgri/numerical/gdsii-toolbox

in a tutorial: GDSII_for_the_Rest_of_Us-.pdf The file gdsii_docs-.zip contains definitions of the GDSII file format and example scripts for the toolbox.

Toolbox functions are grouped into the following directories:

Basic: Contains the low level functions for reading and writing of files in GDSII stream format and defines objects and methods for working with GDSII layouts.

Elements: Contains functions that return gds_element objects.

Structures: Contains functions that return gds_structure objects

Boolean: The GDSII toolbox contains a method that performs boolean set operations on boundary elements. This is described in more detail in the file: README-Boolean / README-Boolean.pdf

Misc: Functions that don't return gds_* objects.

Scripts: Command line scripts for Octave that can be run directly from the shell prompt in a Linux / Unix environment.

This software contains several MEX functions, which must be compiled with a C compiler before the library can be used, or a C++ compiler for the Clipper library. The C compiler must be sufficiently C99 conformant; the LCC compiler that is included with earlier versions of MATLAB will not compile many of the mex functions (see the MATLAB documentation for compiling external functions).

For Octave on Linux, the mex functions are compiled by executing

$ ./makemex-octave

at the shell prompt. In MATLAB or Octave on Windows the mex functions are compiled by changing to the ./gds2-toolbox directory and running

makemex

at the MATLAB/Octave command prompt.

KLayout is an excellent viewer and editor for GDSII files.

If you find a bug in the software, please send a message to ulf.griesmann@nist.gov or ulfgri@gmail.com and I will try to fix it.