Conversion Software
Version 8.65
1/28/02
1 Installation Guide for UNIX/Linux Systems 6
1.1 Requirements 6
1.2 Installation of the Conversion Software 6
1.2.1 Linux/Solaris Systems 6
1.2.2 WIN32 Systems 10
1.3 Updating the Software 11
1.4 Setting up the ftp Server on Linux Systems 12
1.5 SuSE 7.1 14
2 General Information 15
3 Restrictions and Design Rules 18
3.1 Common Rules 18
3.2 Data Format Specific Rules 19
3.2.1 DXF 19
3.2.2 CIF 20
3.2.3 GERBER 20
3.2.4 GDSII 20
4 Usage of the Conversion Package 21
5 Conversion Parameters 26
5.1 Main Source File 26
5.2 Source File Type 26
5.3 Name of Layer 26
5.4 Magnification Factor 26
5.5 Rotation 27
5.6 Translation in x 27
5.7 Translation in y 27
5.8 Mirroring in x 27
5.9 Mirroring in y 28
5.10 Main Structure 28
5.11 Borders of Flat Field 28
5.12 Stripe Width 29
5.13 Block Height 29
5.14 Pixel Size 29
5.15 Frame Size 30
5.16 Exposure Mode 30
5.17 Arc Resolution 30
5.18 DXF Units 31
5.19 Stretch Exposure 31
5.20 Additional Pixel 31
5.21 Automatic Stripes 33
5.22 Assume Connected 34
5.23 Keep Temporary Files 34
5.24 Additional Blocks 34
5.25 Lic Directory 35
5.26 Expose Bidirectional 35
5.27 Xor Mode 35
5.28 Calculate Exposed Area 36
5.29 Licbuffer Size 36
5.30 Automatic Centering 36
5.31 Spotsize Correction 37
5.32 Scaling 37
5.33 Cluster Hosts 38
5.34 Left Optic Path 38
5.35 Scale Offset 38
5.36 Invert Spotsize Correction 39
6 Conversion of CIF Design Files 39
7 Conversion of GDSII Design Files 40
8 Conversion of DXF Design Files 41
8.1 General 41
8.2 The "dxf" Program 45
9 Conversion of GERBER Data 49
9.1 Description of gerber.cfg 49
9.2 Description of Supported Gerber Commands 54
9.2.1 General Commands 54
9.2.2 Drawing Commands 55
9.2.3 Miscellaneous Commands 55
9.2.4 Sequence Numbers 55
9.3 Extended Gerber (RS-274x) 55
9.4 General 56
10 Conversion of HIMT Structure Data 57
11 Conversion of HPGL Data 60
11.1 How to convert HPGL designs 60
11.2 HPGL Command Line Options 62
12 The struct2dxf Tool 64
13 Checking lic files 65
14 The HIMT Viewer 66
14.1 Installation 66
14.2 Usage 67
14.2.1 General 67
14.2.2 Short Instruction for Exposure Preview from the MENU 67
14.2.3 Short Instruction for Exposure Preview from the Command Line 68
14.2.4 General Usage 68
14.2.5 The Log Window 70
14.2.6 The Status Display 70
14.2.7 The Display Window 70
14.2.8 File Menu 71
14.2.9 The Edit Menu 72
14.2.10 The Buttons 74
14.3 Preview of Merged Layers 75
15 Troubleshooting 76
16 The HIMT Structure Format 78
17 Stretched Exposures 82
17.1 Step by step instruction 82
18 The "atrans" program 83
18.1 INSTALLATION 84
18.2 The cksum Feature 88
18.3 Deleting Designs on the OS/9 System 88
19 Spot Size Correction 90
20 Conversion Cluster 93
20.1 Requirements 93
20.2 General Setup 94
20.3 Installation of master PC 95
20.4 Installation of a cluster PC (Slave) 98
20.5 Setting up the cluster 101
20.6 Performance 103
20.7 Converting on the cluster 105
20.8 Hints/Caveats 107
21 Troubleshooting 108
22 Changes 122
23 APPENDIX 127
23.1 DXF Output Filter Sample 127
1/28/02, BA/SD
1 Installation Guide for UNIX/Linux Systems
1.1 Requirements
A SPARC/SOLARIS (Version 2.4 or higher) workstation, a PC running Linux (Kernel 2.0.0) or a Windows NT workstation with at least 32MB of memory (128MB recommended) is needed. The conversion software itself doesn't use much space (< 3MB), but for your conversion you will need (depending on the complexity of your designs) from about 10MB up to several Gigabytes of harddisk space. On a SPARC/SOLARIS system make sure you have about 20MB of space available on your /usr partition if you want to use the MENU graphical user interface (see Tk/Tcl installation below).
1.2 Installation of the Conversion Software
1.2.1 Linux/Solaris Systems
Since version 8.65 the install script install.sh should be used to install the software on your system. This script automatically installs the correct bineries and libraries. It also gives you some hints how to set up your system if there are any problems.
Installation guide:
STEP1: Create a new User, for example "convert" on your workstation. Refer to the workstation manual for doing this.
Note: You usually need to have root rights to do this.
STEP2: Login as the new user and change to its home directory (e.g. /home/convert).
STEP3: Copy the file instxxxx.tgz to this directory (replace xxxx with the software version number, e.g. inst813le.tgz. The letter "l" indicates LINUX software while "s" indicates Sparc software, the "e" indicates the software is for systems with an EDDU.)
STEP4: Uncompress the file:
gzip -d instxxxx.tgz
STEP5: Untar the file and run installation script
tar xvf instxxxx.tar
install.sh
STEP6: Set a path to the newly created cmds directory (e.g. /home/convert/cmds) where the conversion executables reside. Check in your SPARC/SOLARIS manual on how to do this. On a SuSE Linux system append ":~/cmds" to the path setting in /etc/profile (remember to log on and off afterwards). The "~" represents each users home directory.
STEP7: Remove the file instxxxx.tar if you want to save the disk space:
rm instxxxx.tar
STEP8: If you want to use the graphical user interface 'MENU', make sure Tk/Tcl (Version 7.x) is installed on your system. Most Linux distributions come with that package; on SPARC system it has to be installed. To test whether the TK/Tcl package is installed start the MENU under Linux by entering
menu
in your home directory or enter
sh menu
on a SPARC. If the MENU doesn't start (error message: wish not found) install Tk/Tcl.
SuSE Linux:
STEP1: Login as root.
STEP2: Insert the Linux CD.
STEP3: Start yast.
STEP4: Select "Choose/Install packages"
STEP5: Select "Change/Create configuration"
STEP6: Select "Tk/Tcl"
STEP7: Select all packages.
STEP8: Hit F10 twice for installation and follow the instructions.
SPARC/SOLARIS:
(You will need about 20MB of free space on /usr)
STEP1: Retrieve the following packages via ftp from the Internet:
tcl7.5.p1.SPARC.Solaris.2.5.pkg.tgz
tk4.1.SPARC.Solaris.2.5.pkg.tgz
(look at SUNSITE.UNC.EDU:\\pub\packages\solaris\Sparc):
STEP2: Login as root.
STEP3: Copy the files to a temporary directory.
STEP4: Unpack both files:
gzip -d tcl7.5.p1.SPARC.Solaris.2.5.pkg.tgz
gzip -d tk4.1.SPARC.Solaris.2.5.pkg.tgz
tar xvf tcl7.5.p1.SPARC.Solaris.2.5.pkg.tgz
tar xvf tk4.1.SPARC.Solaris.2.5.pkg.tgz
STEP5: Install the packages with
/sbin/pkgadd -d . tcl7.5
/sbin/pkgadd -d . tk4.1
If pkgadd is not installed or some other problems occur, refer to your SOLARIS documentation (Hint: You will get help with "man pkgadd")
STEP6: Create the following links:
ln -s /usr/local/bin/wish4.1 /usr/bin/wish
ln -s /usr/local/lib/libtcl7.5* /usr/lib
ln -s /usr/local/lib/libtk4.1* /usr/lib
STEP7: Logout and login as convert user. Start the MENU (s.a.). If you get the following error message
wish: cannot open libX11.so.x.x
check the version of your currently installed Xlib:
ls /usr/lib/libX11*
results in the following output:
libX11.so.y.y
Then link
ln -s ls /usr/lib/libX11.so.y.y /usr/lib/libX11.so.x.x
STEP8: Logout and login as convert user.
1.2.2 WIN32 Systems
STEP1: Create a directory for your conversion software, e.g. c:\convert. (All further examples will assume that you chose this directory for your installation. If you chose a different directory, change all path names to the corresponding directory name.) If you update over a previous version, you can either create a new directory or install over the previous version and go directly to step 2.
STEP2: Extract the archive containing the conversion software to the directory created in step 1. The archive filename will typically be like ins823w.zip, where 823 stands for version number 8.23 and the w indicates that you have the WINDOWS version of the software. For the extraction use an UNZIP utility like WinZip or a command prompt program like pkunzip.exe. After the extraction, you will have several subdirectories in your convert directory: (cmds, cif, gerber, ?).
STEP3: Set a path to the cmds directory, in our case c:\convert\cmds. To do this systemwide under NT you must log in as administrator, otherwise the settings will only affect your current account. You find this setting for the path in CONTROL PANEL/SYSTEM/ENVIRONMENT.
On a WIN9x System, please add the appropriate path to the path statement in the autoexec.bat and reboot. To check whether this has worked, just type ,border' in a DOS-Box. There should then be message like this
[c:\convert] border
border <main structure> ...... use ?
Version: 8
Revision: 8
STEP4: The installation is now complete. Edit the convert.cfg in your convert directoy (e.g. with NOTEPAD) to set all necessary parameters for the conversion. Then start the conversion by opening a DOS-Box and typing
xconvert
STEP5: If you want to use the MENU interface for setting the conversion parameters and starting the conversion, you must install the Tk/Tcl Toolkit. You find it in a directory called ‘tclwin’ provided with your conversion software. Just start the program in this directory and follow the installation instructions. To set up the MENU, create a shortcut of the file menu.tcl in the convert directory to your desktop. Change the icon if you want. If you double-click on this shortcut now, the convert MENU will start. If you start a conversion now (after setting the proper parameters) a small status window will appear informing you about the status of the conversion and you will find a minimized DOS-Box in your WINDOWS-Taskbar in which the conversion is running. To stop a conversion, close the DOS-Box in the task bar and the status window manually.
1.3 Updating the Software
Before updating, make sure you have the installation package of your currently running software available in case the upgrade fails. Instead of upgrading you can also create a new user for each software version, e.g. convert831, and do a full installation instead.
Updating of Conversion Software on Linux/Solaris Systems
STEP1: Login as the new user and change to its home directory (e.g. /home/convert).
STEP2: Copy the update file instxxxx.tgz to this directory.
STEP3: Uncompress the file:
gzip -d instxxxx.tgz
STEP4: Untar the file and run the installation script
tar xvf instxxxx.tar
install.sh
Updating of Conversion Software on WIN32 Systems
STEP1: Copy the update file (ins8xxxw.zip) to your existing convert directory (c:\convert)
STEP2: To unpack on a WIN32 system you may use a command line orientated tool like unzip or pkunzip:
unzip -d insxxxw.zip
or
pkunzip -d ins8xxxw.zip
1.4 Setting up the ftp Server on Linux Systems
Since SuSE Linux 6.4 we are experiencing problems with the data transfer to the OS/9 system. The reason for this seems to be the default ftpd server running on the Linux system. While we do not know about problems when transferring data between two Linux systems, the communication with OS/9 systems sometimes is faulty.
There may be two kinds of problems:
-Completely missing LIC files. This is generally only a machine time consumption problem. When you are using "atrans" to transfer the data the program will notice this and give an error message. This can be fixed by transferring the data again.
-Corrupted LIC files. This is more serious as the whole exposure may fail. It is very time consuming to prevent these errors as the xcheck_lic software may take several hours to check a design.
To fix the problems, please run the following tests:
STEP1: Login as convert user to your conversion PC.
STEP2: Start an ftp session to this machine
ftp localhost
STEP3: You will be prompted for a username then. The prompt may look like this:
220 D2.himt.de FTP server (Version wu-2.4.2-academ[BETA-18](1) Fri Dec 11 19:58:25 /etc/localtime 1998) ready.
or like this:
220 ba.himt.de FTP server (Version 6.4/OpenBSD/Linux-ftpd-0.16) ready.
In case you see the second prompt (with different numbers though), you should change the ftp server on your Linux system:
STEP1: Login as root on your conversion PC.
STEP2: Try the following command
wu.ftpd
If you get an error message like:
bash: wu.ftpd: command not found
proceed with STEP3, else go to STEP4.
STEP3: Go to the conversion user home directory (in most cases /home/convert). Then change to the subdirectory "wu.ftpd" and install the wu.ftpd server:
rpm -i wuftpd.rpm
Note: You must log in as root in STEP1.
STEP4: Edit the file /etc/inetd.conf and look for this lines:
#ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd wu.ftpd -a
#ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd proftpd
ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd in.ftpd
Change to:
ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd wu.ftpd -a
#ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd proftpd
#ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd in.ftpd
Restart the ftpserver with:
/sbin/init.d/inetd reload
Go to STEP2 to make sure your installation was successful.
If you still encounter problems, read the chapter on “atrans” in this manual and use the “cksum” option to enable the checksum feature. Please also contact HIMT immediately.
1.5 SuSE 7.1
In SuSE 7.1 there is a bug in connection with IP6v. If you try to open a telnet session to your computer you will get the following error message:
telnetd: getnameinfo.
You have to update the packages nkitb and nkitserv, You can get the latest packages from
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.1/a1/nkitb.rpm
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.1/n1/nkitserv.rpm
2 General Information
The purpose of this software package is to convert source files from GERBER, DXF, CIF, GDSII, HPGL or HIMT Structure format into LIC format. The LIC format can (unlike the other input data formats) be converted in real time into the final pixel data set. The advantage of the LIC format compared to the final pixel data set is that its file size is much smaller due to a highly optimized compression.
The complete conversion is divided into up to five separate tasks. A different program performs each task. The main program "xconvert" controls the different tasks and takes care of a correct communication between them. Each program stores statistical information in a report file.
You can also run all programs manually. To obtain information about the meaning of the required parameters just start the program without any parameters (Exception: xconvert -?).
xconvert:
This is the main program which has to create the correct environment, to read in the settings in the configuration files (convert.cfg, dxf.cfg, merge.cfg, ?), to initialize the conversion tasks and to handle the communication between the different tasks.