*** Error in routine dbShapeQuery:

This is telling  you that you've passed the wrong arguments to the function (it's quite clear actually). You appear to have the purpose name as the third argument, whereas it should be a bounding-box list (i.e. a list of lists, representing the lower left and upper right coordinates of the box to query).

My expectation is that you would use:

cv=geGetEditCellView()
bBox=list(10:20 30:50) ; or whatever region you need to query
shapes=dbShapeQuery(cv list("M1" "drawing" ) bBox 0 0) ; only top level shapes
shapes~>lpp=list("M2" "pin")

Regards,

Andrew.

You will have to filter the shapes you get from dbShapeQuery as it returns the shapes whose BOUNDING BOX intersects your search box. Any shape which crosses the search box or any shape outside the search box whose bounding box will be returned as well as those you are looking for. This is illustrated in the documentation for the function dbGetOverlaps.

The simple method is to compare the search box with the transformed bounding box of the shapes found. If the shape is not at the top level of the hierarchy, the return value will be a list of the hierarchical instances leading to that shape. Get the instance transform using dbGetInstTransform and then transform the bBox of the shape with dbTransformBBox.

To find if the resulting bBox is inside the search box, compare the lower left points and the upper right points of the boxes.

You can enclose all of this in the setof statement, the search box points have been put into variables before the loop for performance:

shapesToBeModified = setof( shape listOfFoundShapes
                                                if(listp(shape) then
                                                      shapeBox = dbTransformBBox( car(last(shape))~>bBox dbGetInstTransform(shape) )
                                                      shape = car(last(shape))
                                               else
                                                      shapeBox = shape~>bBox )
                                                when( xCoord(lowerLeft(shapeBox)) >= llxSearchBox && yCoord(lowerLeft(shapeBox)) >= llySearchBox &&
                                                           xCoord(upperRight(shapeBox)) <= urxSearchBox && yCoord(upperRight(shapeBox)) <= urySearchBox
                                                          shape )
                                          ) ; setof

This code has not been tested.

Thank you for your suggestion...but when I run it shows unbounded variable listOfFoundShapes....further I didn't understood this part of the code-

                                               if(listp(shape) then
                                                      shapeBox = dbTransformBBox( car(last(shape))~>bBox dbGetInstTransform(shape) )
                                                      shape = car(last(shape))
                                               else
                                                      shapeBox = shape~>bBox )

please simply....

The variable listOfFoundShapes is for you to populate with a list of the shapes you want to process. I don't know how you want to find them, dbQueryShapes or dbGetTrueOverlaps. I only supply code fragments.

This code processes the found each shape inside the loop. If the variable contains a list, it is a hierarchical shape somewhere in an instance and needs to have its bounding box transformed, otherwise the shape only needs its bounding box. The hierarchical shape is extracted from the list car(last(shape)) so it can be processed as an individual shape, although changing the shape changes it wherever the parent cell is placed.

                                               if(listp(shape) then
                                                      shapeBox = dbTransformBBox( car(last(shape))~>bBox dbGetInstTransform(shape) )
                                                      shape = car(last(shape))
                                               else
                                                      shapeBox = shape~>bBox )

Also from your original post, it sounded to me as if you were only interested in the top level shapes (since I wasn't expecting that you'd change the layer of shapes in subblocks in a particular region, since that would also affect other occurrences of that block which weren't in that region). In that case, you don't need to bother doing any transformation at all - because the bBox of those shapes would be in the correct coordinate system in the first place.

Regards,

Andrew.

Thanks for your explanation theopaone, Thanks for suggestions Andrew...