voids, dynamic shapes, and 15.x

A dynamic shape is the boundary object that contains the original outline and any user added voids. A dynamic
shape can contain 0 or more generated shapes. Generated shapes appear on class ETCH and contain the actual copper
fills used for artwork.

If you want to access the generated shape(s) of this dynamic shape then you should process the list of shapes on
shapeAuto attribute [ dbid->shapeAuto ]. Each of these generated shapes may have zero or more voids.

dbid->shapeAuto
= nil then NOT a dynamic shape (basically any shape where dbid->shapeIsBoundary = nil)
= () empty list, a dynamic shape with no etch
= (dbid1, dbid2, ...) list of generated shapes


By default axlSetFindFilter will always return the boundary shape. If you want the generated
shapes do NOT add "BOUNDARY_SHAPES" to the list of ?enabled sent to axlSetFindFilter.
Example: axlSetFindFilter(?enabled '("NOALL" "SHAPES") ?onButtons nil)

Thx for your fast response and I apologize for my tardy reply.

I've picked this issue up again, and both where ->shapeAuto == nil nor the shape where ->shapeAuto == (dbid:xxx) have ->voids == nil. This makes sense in that a 'show element' on the shape reports no voids even tho voids can clearly be seen in the shape. Now after I =manually= place a void in the shape a 'show element' on the shape does indeed report one void. From this I deduce 'show element' only reports manually-placed voids, and looking at the shape object does show one element in shape_db->voids and this element is a polygon.

But I'm having no luck finding the dynamically-created voids. Grrrr.


Chris Walters
local Cadence guru
()

Turns out the problem was shape objects defined on NEGATIVE planes do not have voids as attributes even though you can clearly see their effect visually. Changing the plane to POSITIVE magically put all the voids in the ->voids attribute where one would expect to find them.

I can't trust my users to turn all the planes to POSITIVE prior to running the routine that looks for these voids, it'd be nice if there was a way to find them when planes are NEGATIVE.

But thanks to all who replied!

CASE CLOSED


Chris Walters
local Cadence guru
()