User's Guide for Cif2mat

Layout and CIF Preparation

In order properly convert the CIF file and automatically obtain the linkage information from a layout, the following rules should be observed.

• Hinge psuedo layer
  • Use simple substrate hinge - Sample instance of substrate hinge in CIF.
    
  • Scissor hinge - use a typical scissor hinge, with the addition of a 1-um wide strip of BPMTL layer running along the hinge axis of the 2 joining structures. The BPMTL layer strip should be drawn on top of both POLY1 and POLY2 layers. Sample instance of scissor hinge with psuedo layer in CIF.
    

• Reflector psuedo layer
  • Place the BPMTL layer over MTL layer. The reflective psuedo layer is defined to be the area with BPMTL over MTL. Please also see the known problems below.

• Prior to generating the CIF file, ensure that the design is
  • composed of box geometry only, i.e. no polygon, circle, wire, etc.
  • manhattanized, i.e. no rotations.
  • flattened, i.e. only top-level cell and not subcells or instances.

Executing Cif2mat at the command line

• If the cif2mat executable hasn't been made yet, please follow the instruction on how to create cif2mat excutables.

• Cif2mat options:
  

  -o filename	output data into filename
  -s	generates linkage and structure summary (default no)
  -r	attempts to resequence the structure listing in the linkage order (default no)
  -nolinkage	whether to form linkage (default yes)
  -v	display the current version number
  -h	displays help screen

• Execute at the command line with typical options:
  cif2mat -s -o m3doutputfilename cifinputfile.cif

Now the outputfile of cif2mat convertor is ready to be used with the Mat3d Matlab Toolkit.

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Known problems

• If a linkage does not originate from a anchored structutre, this occasionally causes cif2mat to generate an empty output. To still obtain M3D output, specify the '-nolinkage' (no linkage) option. But of course the linkage information will have to be entered manually in this event (via the setlink mat3d command).

• Each structure should only have 1 box geometry for its reflector psuedo layer. If multiple boxes are included for a particular structure, the last box geometry read will determine the reflector geometry of the structure.

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modified on September 9, 1999