Polygon Placement

  1. Go to Examples/Digital Logic/ Pix2Net.prj for this tutorial.
  2. Before starting, make sure that the poly and diffusion layers are on.

Layers

  1. Go into settings under the Polygon tab and make sure that the visible layers settings is highlighted.

polygonsettings

Polygon Placement Tutorial

Selecting, moving, and cloning polygons:

selectpolygons

1. Right-click on the overlay screen and move the mouse down to go to and then left-click on coordinates. A screen like this will pop up.

New2

2. Under Target Location, for the X, type 92 and for the Y type -48.4, after that, move the mouse over go and left click. This will take you to the exact location (92,-48.4) on the overlay screen. Here you should see a display like this.

New1

  1. There are 8 different polygons here, even though it looks as if there are only 4.

4. Left-click Select Polygons and then left-click and draw a box around all the polygons that are shown in the overlay. This will highlight the polygons and make the inside of them blue.

New

After the polygons are selected, Move Polygons, Clone Polygons, and Clone Array will be available to use in the polygon tab.

  1. First, click on Move Polygons, then left-click on the polygons that are to be moved (the polygons that are already selected) and hold, drag the polygon to the right and place it where it looks like the polygon might go (in a different space than where it was before).

New3

6. There are more places in this area that looks like these polygons might fit. To copy the polygons, first make sure that the correct polygons are selected, then click on Clone Polygons.

  1. After that, left-click on the polygon(s) selected and drag away and the user will see that the selected polygons were cloned.

New4

After the mouse is let go and clicked again, new clones are made.

  1. Now clone the polygons and place them in their correct spaces in the overlay.

New5

When selecting a polygon, the user can use many useful tools to interact with the polygon. One of the options that is not in the toolbar, is right clicking on the polygon. When the user right clicks on the selected polygon(s), a screen comes up like this:

selectpoly

This is very helpful if there are places that look like the polygon would fit if it were to be flipped or rotated a certain way.

  1. Go to the coordinates (200,-94.5).

Here is a situation where it looks like the polygon fits in the picture, but it is not rotated or flipped the right way.

misplaced

  1. Now select these polygons, right click, and press “flip left to right.”

misplaced1

As the user can see, the whole selection of polygons were flipped from left to right.

  1. It still looks like it is not in the right place, so right click again and press “flip top to bottom.”

misplaced2

After it was flipped again, the polygon went back to the where it was supposed to be.

Let’s say that there is a situation where the user placed a polygon down in the correct place, but in the wrong layer. This is an easy fix.

  1. Go to the coordinates (55,-137.5).

wronglayer

2. Select the polygon that is out of place and right click and then select move to layer. In this situation, all of the rectangles that are blue around this one yellow rectangle, are in the poly layer.

wronglayer1

Once “ok” is clicked, Pix2Net will change the polygon color to the color of the layer selected.

wronglayer2

Moving Polygons out of place:

1. Go to the coordinates (50,-115). Here are a group of polygons that seem to be out of place.

  1. Click on select polygons and select the group of polygons that are misplaced.

movepoly

  1. Now, click on move and move it right, back to the spot where it looks like it should be

movepoly1

More on cloning

1. Go to the coordinates (171,-152). In this picture, there is an empty space that looks like the shape of the polygon that is already there.

cloning

  1. Select the polygons and click clone polygons then left click and drag to the left, where the polygons look like they should be at.

cloning1

As seen in the picture above, the polygons were cloned and moved to a space exactly, or close to exactly, the same as the original space.

clonearray

The Clone Array feature allows the user to create multiple copies of one or more polygons, each set placed a fixed distance from the original/previous set in a specific direction. This ability is useful whenever a regular pattern of polygons needs to be created by hand. For example, a grid of 100 squares could be created by creating a square, cloning it 9 times right, then cloning that newly created row 9 times down.

  1. Go to coordinates (92,-48.4) again for a similar example, but done in a different way
  2. Go to the Home tab.
  3. Click on Micron ruler.
  4. Go to the furthest left point of the polygon and click and hold.

clonearrays

  1. Point the cursor to the furthest left point of where the polygon is to be placed.
  2. Hold shift and the micron ruler will be straightened.
  3. Select the group of polygons (if they are not already selected) (make sure to be in the polygon tab)
  4. Click Clone Array
  5. In the Clone Selected Polygons box, make the Direction right, Clone Count 4 and Step Distance 2.7 µm
  6. This will make 4 clones 2.7 µm away from each other placed to the right.

New5

addline

Left click anywhere in the overlay window to add a start point to the line, a second click adds the endpoint. After adding the start point holding shift will force orthogonality. The thickness of this line can be defined in the Polygon Settings window.

addrectangle

Click and drag to outline a box when the left mouse button is released a rectangular polygon will be added to the active layer.

  1. Go to coordinate (75,-83).

Here is an example of a box in the overlay that needs a polygon added to it.

  1. It is almost a perfect rectangle, so click add rectangle and then left click and drag the mouse from the one of the top corners to the opposite bottom corner.

addrec

  1. Release the mouse and Pix2Net will draw a rectangle just as the user outlined.

addrec1

addsquare

Left click in the overlay to add a square to the active polygon layer. The square size can be specified in the Polygon Settings window.

addpolygon

Left click in the overlay window to start adding points, once three or more points are connected, the polygon will be added to the active layer.

  1. Go to coordinates (80,-144).

Not every polygon that is to be placed is rectangular. Using the add polygon the user can make different shapes that are needed to be placed. Here is an example of a shape that is not rectangular.

addpoly

2. Draw a polygon around the shape above. Every time the user needs to turn in a different way, just left click where the line needs to be. Remember, everything inside the shape that is made will be made into a polygon. This is what happens when the user ends the line back at the start.

addpoly1

settings

The polygon settings windows allows adjustment to the line thickness and square size in microns. There is also a setting to adjust the maximum polygon size

The max polygon size determines the maximum width and height of the polygons in the project. If a tool attempts to create a polygon larger than this size, the polygon will automatically be split until its dimensions no longer exceed the max polygon size. If this value is too high then polygon rendering and netlisting will start to become inefficient.

Select active layer to tell Pix2Net that when selecting layers, the user only wants to select the active layer. Select visible layers to be able to select all visible layers with polygons.

polygonsettings

More Information

For more info on other functions in the polygon tab, see Polygon Tab