Virtuoso Studio: Viewing Cross Section of a Layout

Our new AI-powered custom design solution, Virtuoso Studio, leverages our 30 years of industry knowledge and leadership, providing innovative features, reimagined infrastructure for unrivaled productivity, and new levels of integration that stretch beyond classic design boundaries. In this blog series, learn how the best analog design tools just got better to help you keep pace with your challenging design issues.

When we think about layers, the first things that may come to mind are cakes, sandwiches, or even onions! Layers exist all around us, forming the very fabric of our natural world and contributing to its incredible complexity and beauty. The beauty of a layered cake lies in its presentation and the delightful surprise in every slice. Each layer complements the others, creating a perfect harmony of taste.

Just like a beautiful, layered cake, you can think of a layout design as a layered structure where each layer serves a specific purpose. Would it not be great if you could peek into all the layers present in a particular area of your layout design? That’s exactly what Cross Section Viewer helps with!

Cross Section Viewer is a Virtuoso Layout Suite MXL feature, introduced in IC23.1. You can use it to view the cross-section of physical layers in the layout. The viewer displays the different layers present in a cross-section, from top to bottom. This is helpful when you want to identify any missing or wrongly placed layers or debug any connection issues across layers.

When you invoke Cross Section Viewer, a cutline appears on the canvas that follows the pointer. As you hover the cutline over the design, the cross-section of the area underneath the cutline is displayed in the viewer. 

You can choose to view the cross-section in the Cross Section assistant window or in a floating window and easily toggle between the two. If you want to analyze a specific area further, you can freeze the cross-section so that it stays on the screen while you perform other tasks. The below image shows the cross-section of an area displayed in a floating window.

Features of Cross Section Viewer

The following are the features of Cross Section Viewer:

Display Control Settings

Complete control over cross-section display settings is available. Besides specifying the orientation, color, and size of the cutline, you can choose if you want to display the names of used layers, unused layers, and nets in the cross-section.

Forward-Cut Enable

Forward cut functionality can be activated to display the vias present between two adjacent layers. Forward cut also displays the vias that are not directly under the cutline.

Configuration Settings

The Cross Section Viewer configuration file lets you further customize the display of a cross-section. You can define settings such as the thickness to be used for displaying layers, the layers and layer materials that need to be skipped, and the layers that need to be shown as merged on the same line in the cross-section.

The following images compare how a cross-section looks when the thickness of Metal1 is increased and the Nimp and Oxide layers are merged to be displayed on the same line.

So, the next time you want to take a deeper look into a specific section of your layout, just switch to Cross Section Viewer, to cut through all the layers of that section, and find out what’s really happening out there.

Related Resources

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Happy Reading!

Rohini Garg and Savita Thakur