Get the extremes coordinates of a chosen Layer Purpose Pair (lpp) in a layout cellview containing instances and matrices within a hierarchy with dbShapeQuery

Steven,

I think this is a bit more complicated than it needs to be, but a good attempt nevertheless! I think it might generate a lot of data by building lists of edges, plus you're appending to the end each time which could get slow for a large set of data. I've not really reviewed the code (sorry, just back from vacation and so don't have too much time). You might want to take a look at the approach for handling mosaics here (sorry, it's in LISP syntax, but hopefully you'll get the idea):

How to flatten a specific layer and measure the total area of that layer ?

However, if the data is always orthogonal or 45-degree (quite likely), you could take advantage of the abe functions (Advanced Boolean Engine). This code would do what you want quite efficiently and with little code (it handles the hierarchy automatically). I wrote it in C-style to match what you were doing:

/***************************************************************
*                                                              *
*   abLayerExtent(lpp @optional (cvId geGetEditCellView()))    *
*                                                              *
*     First argument is either a layer name (in which case     *
*  "drawing" is used as the purpose, or a list of layer name   *
* and purpose. The second optional arguments is the cellView.  *
*                                                              *
***************************************************************/

procedure(abLayerExtent(lpp @optional (cvId geGetEditCellView()))
    let((lay iterator polygon ollx olly ourx oury firstPoint)
        when(stringp(lpp)
            lpp=list(lpp "drawing")
        )
        ;----------------------------------------------------------------
        ; The unwindProtect is to ensure the abeDone happens
        ; even if an error occurs in this block of code
        ;----------------------------------------------------------------
        unwindProtect(
            {
                abeInit(cvId)
                lay=abeLayerFromCellView(car(lpp) ?purpose cadr(lpp))
                iterator=abeIslandIterator(lay)
                while(polygon=iterator->next
                    unless(ollx 
                        firstPoint=car(polygon)
                        ollx=xCoord(firstPoint)
                        olly=yCoord(firstPoint)
                        ourx=ollx
                        oury=olly
                    )
                    foreach(point polygon
                        destructuringBind((x y) point
                            ollx=min(ollx x)
                            olly=min(olly y)
                            ourx=max(ourx x)
                            oury=max(oury y)
                        )
                    )
                )
            }
            abeDone()
        )
        ;----------------------------------------------------------------
        ; if no points were found return nil, otherwise the
        ; bounding box
        ;----------------------------------------------------------------
        ollx && list(ollx:olly ourx:oury)
    )
)

Regards,

Andrew

Andrew, 

Thank you for providing a detailed and clear explanation and code. You are right, I tried to work with dbShapeQuery but with a mosaic instancing another custom instance it was just complicated to handle and it made the code messy.

This is working perfectly fine and the shapes that I'm working with are always orthogonal (can be any rotation but those are always 90°/180°/270°/360°) which will work with what you provided.

The ABE is really useful and I will try to learn more about it.

The mosaics were really problematic to handle with dbShapeQuery(), do you think this layout structure is okay to work with or is it better to use another form of "instance matrix" such as the groupeArrays ?

I saw this and it looks promising and easier to define with flipping every even row for better Standard cells abutment for example.

Thank you again for your answer.

Steven.

Okay I checked the groupArrays of instances and we can only get it from a window human interface interaction from a mosaic of instances which is problematic when trying to make an automative SKILL program.

Also for the function :

Steven,

Answering your last two posts is on my to-do list. I didn't have time to get to it today because of commitments in the day job. Hopefully tomorrow.

Andrew