Drawn to Outline

Drawn to Outline is a read-write DFM action designed to reduce the number of features in layers by replacing drawn areas with their surface representation or with their outline. All the nets in the layer are processed by this action. Suitably drawn areas are detected and replaced by a corresponding surface (or its outline).

This data conversion drastically reduces processing times and, in some cases, enables application of DFM actions that would otherwise be impossible to implement.

Drawn to Outline provides the user with a single-pass pinhole detection and elimination process without requiring a special run of the Pinholes Elimination DFM action.

Drawn to Outline operates on any layer. After it generates processing results, it stores the data in a new layer. The name of this new layer results from a concatenation of a suffix to the original layer name. This suffix is one of the Drawn to Outlines parameters for a layer with name <layer name> and suffix value <suffix> the new layers name will be:

<layer name>_<suffix>

Known Limitations

Only layers with under 320,000 nets may be processed in global mode.

Special Reports

Lists feature count for all categories.

Result Attributes

The following attributes are produced once for each layer and once (without a layer name) as a total for the checklist run.

Attribute

Description

...Contourized

Number of features accumulated in the Contourized category

...Untouched

Number of features accumulated in the Untouched category

...Outside window

Number of features accumulated in the Outside Window category

Note: An ellipsis () indicates where to insert a layer name, such as in the Result Attributes list.

For example: ...copper_balanced_added indicates that a layer name is required at the beginning of the attribute.