General Structure and Miscellaneous Utilities

File system hierarchy

High level annotated picture of KQCircuits repository’s different subdirectories:

KQCircuits                      Git repository root
├── ci
├── klayout_package
│   └── python                  Salt package
│       ├── console_scripts
│       ├── drc                 Design Rule Checks
│       ├── kqcircuits          PyPI package
│       │   ├── chips
│       │   ├── elements        Basic Elements
│       │   └── ...
│       └── scripts
│           ├── macros
│           ├── masks
│           └── simulations
├── docs                        Documentation sources
├── singularity
├── tests                       Pytest files
│   ├── chips
│   ├── elements
│   ├── ...
├── util                        Utility scripts
└── xsection

In the KQCircuits root folder the most important folder for most users is the klayout_package folder, which is also all that is included in the Salt package. Other folders are mainly for automatic tests and documentation. KQCircuits code is divided into the kqcircuits and scripts folders in klayout_package/python. These two folders are also (after installation process) linked as symbolic links kqcircuits and kqcircuits_scripts in the ~/.klayout or ~/KLayout folder.

The kqcircuits folder contains all the KQCircuits PCell classes and many other modules used by them or by scripts. Folders directly under kqcircuits containing PCell classes correspond to different PCell libraries such as elements, chips, or test structures.

The scripts folder contains macros to be run in KLayout GUI and scripts for generating simulation files or mask files. The files there are in general not meant to be imported in other Python files. The outputs of simulation or mask scripts can be found in the tmp folder below the main KQCircuits folder.

Miscellaneous Utilities

The util folder contains stand alone, self documenting scripts for various practical use cases:

  • check_layer_props Check or update the layer properties file against values taken from KQCircuit’s default_layers variable.

  • create_element_from_path Create a KQCircuits element in KLayout by specifying the path to the file containing the element. This script can be used to integrate with external editors.

  • gdiff Compares a pair of .oas or .gds files or directories containing such files and informs you about differences.

  • netlist_as_graph Draw a graph based on a chip’s generated netlist file.

  • oas2dxf Convert .oas to .dxf or the other way around. DXF files are more human readable and may be edited with scripts.