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≡≡ Basic Information Introduction LASI (LAyout System for Individuals(ists)) (Pronounced "LAZY") Version 4.1 The LASI CAD System consists of a main program LASI.EXE, a set of utility programs and a help program LHI.EXE. It was originally written for the author's own professional use to do IC and semiconductor device layout on a personal computer. It has also been used for hybrids, printed circuit boards, schematic diagrams and other precision drawing applications. LASI has become particularly valuable to students, schools, universities, or anyone who doesn't have the funding for more elaborate drawing systems. LASI version 4.1 has a new feature that allows basic cells to shared between different drawings or different computers. This is allows groups of people such as students to do their own layouts, but use common elements that have been previously developed. Version 4.1 has therefore been given the nickname the "educational" version, although it has the full capabilities of previous versions and more. LASI is intended to be friendly and intuitively obvious, which makes it easy to learn and operate by occasional users. Once the basics are understood, the commands usually require little additional explanation. Most commands operate on the drawing globally, so that there are no special editing procedures for different parts of a drawing. There are no hierarchical command structures with pull down menus. All commands are essentially random access through menus at the side of the display and may be easily aborted. Information is usually entered by mouse or keyboard. When a command is executed, the program is designed so that the results are displayed as soon as possible, to give good operator interaction. Drawings made using LASI can be translated into other drawing systems by utility programs. Presently, translation to and from CALMA Stream Format and to Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language (HP-GL) is available. LASI also has a drawing language of its own called TLC. Written in plain ASCII text, TLC can be used to interchange drawings or to write auxiliary programs that operate on LASI drawings. LASI is intended to be propagated by software alone. There is therefore no printed manual. This LASI Help and Information program LHI.EXE displays all the documentation, and individual topics can be printed if desired. If a printed manual is needed, a program MANUAL.EXE is supplied that builds a manual complete with index from any LASI help file (files with .HLP extension). You should read the remaining Basic Information topics. After that, you can work your way through the General Information topics. If you are in a hurry to run LASI, it is recommended that you read the Hardware General Information topic to see if your PC is capable of running LASI adequately, and then go to the Quick Start topic. If you are new to LASI you should use the demonstration IC layout as a tutorial, if it has been included on the distribution disk, or is available on the network where you downloaded LASI. By working with a simple layout, you will get a good idea of how LASI works. If you have been using LASI version 3.X or 4.0, you MUST read the Converting Versions topic. You should also read the System Log, to see what changes have been made since the last release. Installing LASI The following information outlines the installation procedures for installing LASI on any PC. If you are reading this, you probably have done the basic installation already. The information is given here so that you can verify that installation has been done correctly. The system files are distributed in compressed form. The distribution will be either a floppy disk version consisting of a self-extracting executable file named LASI41.EXE, or a network version consisting of a set of files compressed into a file LASI41.ZIP. If distributed on floppy disk, an installation batch file INSTALL.BAT MUST be included, along with possible optional files. If distributed on a network, the README. file, containing installation instructions MUST be included within LASI41.ZIP. The system files are listed in the System Contents help topic. If for some reason you obtain LASI as individual files, you should check to see if you have a complete set of files. All files should have the SAME DATE to insure compatibility. LASI will be ready to run with just the basic installation. When you are more familiar with LASI's workings you can do the advanced installation. Installation procedure for networked ZIP compressed files: 1. Make a subdirectory named "\LASI4" on your hard disk under the root directory. 2. Using PKUNZIP or similar program, uncompress and copy the files in LASI41.ZIP into the \LASI4 subdirectory. 3. Add the path "disk:\LASI4" to DOS using the "PATH" DOS Command, where "disk" is the hard disk's letter name. Installation procedure for self-extracting floppy disk version: 1. Run the installation batch file INSTALL.BAT. This will create a subdirectory named "\LASI4" on your hard disk, if it has not yet been created, and will extract and copy the system files to that subdirectory. 2. If there is a demonstration present on the distribution disk, you can install it by running the associated batch file that should have been included. If you are new to LASI you should install the demonstration, otherwise you can skip it. 3. Add the path "disk:\LASI4" to DOS using the "PATH" DOS Command, where "disk" is the hard disk's letter name. It is usually easiest to put the "\LASI4" path in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Quick Start If you are eager to try out LASI here is what to do: 1. Install a mouse and its driver software if you havn't already. You must have an active mouse to operate LASI. 2. Create a "drawing directory" on the hard disk where you installed the system files and make that directory your default directory. DO NOT make drawings in the \LASI4 directory. 3. Copy the FORM.DBD file from the \LASI4 directory to the drawing directory. The FORM.DBD distributed with the system files is a "generic" version and should work with most hardware. 4. Run LASI.EXE of you have a coprocessor, or LASIA.EXE if you don't have a coprocessor. The main program should come up in "System Mode". You can get help on any command by putting the mouse cursor on a command button and then pressing F1. You are now free to experiment on your own! Converting Versions Version 3.X to Version 4.0 If you have not been using LASI version 3, or do not have drawings made using it, you can skip these next instructions. LASI version 4 has many new features over version 3. You should read the System Log topic for a listing of the major changes. 1. Version 4 of LASI now keeps its files in the directory "\LASI4". It is important that the MS-DOS PATH be changed to include "\LASI4" and not "\LASI" as was previously used, since many of the new files have the same name as the old. 2. As a protection, the file name extensions have been changed so that internal files are invisible to the wrong version. You need to convert your internal files (.BPV and .CEL) to version 4 files (.BP4 and .CL4). To do this quickly, the program 3TO4.COM has been supplied. To convert your files simply run 3TO4.COM while logged into a drawing directory. 3TO4.COM will act only on the files in that directory and will create new files and leave the old files unchanged. 3. Converting back to version 3 can be done by using the TLC.EXE program. However, any text made using LASI version 4 will be ignored. The NEW TLC.EXE must be used to make the TLC files, and the OLD TLC.EXE must be used to convert any TLC files to version 3 internal files. 4. The file CONSTS.DBD used in version 3 has been replaced by the file CONSTS4.DBD. The new file contains more information in a different order than the old CONSTS.DBD file. You may leave the old file in your drawing directory so that you can use version 3 again for some reason. 5. The CELLS.DBD file has been replaced by the CELLS4.DBD file This is really the same file, but the name has been changed to prevent the wrong version of LASI from writing to it. 6. FORM.DBD in version 4 contains new parameters. LASI is however smart enough to read for parameter titles so that version 3 can read through a version 4 FORM.DBD file and pick out only what it needs. Version 4.0 to Version 4.1 If you have not been using LASI version 3 or 4.0, or do not have drawings made using either, you can skip these instructions. 1. Version 4.1 of LASI allows basic cells to be taken from a common pool located on the same PC or from a Local Area Network. You may run LASI 4.1 on any drawing done using LASI 4.0. However, the reverse is true only if you have no pooled cells. If there are pooled cells the results will be unpredictable, but generally not fatal. Read the new General topics: Pooling, Pooling Old Cells, Attached Cells and the Command topic ATTACH. 2. Version 4.1 also has 64 layers available instead of the previous 32. The only change necessary is to modify the CONSTS4.DBD file. A converter program 4TO41.COM has been furnished to easily create the new file. 3. The utility programs have been modified to work with 64 layers. They will work on old 4.0 drawings, but 4.0 utilities will only work on the first 32 layers of version 4.1 drawings. Terms of Distribution The LASI System can be copied and distributed by anyone. For floppy distribution, the self-extracting executable LASI41.EXE, the installation batch file INSTALL.BAT and any optional files should be copied directly from the distribution disk. For the network version, the file LASI41.ZIP need only be distributed. Any optional files may be included separately. DO NOT put any optional files into the LASI41.ZIP compressed file. Files should NOT be distributed individually, since all the files are intended to work with each other in the same distribution. Files should all have the SAME DATE. LASI41.EXE or LASI41.ZIP will fit on a single 5.25" or 3.5" HD floppy disk. Breaking the file set into smaller pieces is strongly discouraged because of the possibility of losing files or mixing file dates. Updates An attempt will be made to keep known users updated with the latest version by informing them that a new version is available, where (on a network) it is available, or by just sending out new floppy disks. If dangerous bugs are discovered an attempt will be made to notify or send corrected programs to known users. The author maintains a database of know users, but unknown secondary users should be kept updated by those who gave them the software. Updating secondary users is a responsibility that should be taken seriously. People have been found using ancient versions of the programs, which have since been debugged, greatly improved, or completely revised. To prevent continuously notifying or sending updates to anyone who really isn't using LASI, There is a CUTOFF PERIOD OF ONE YEAR, after which updates will have to be requested. As a general rule, to be sure that you have the most current software contact the author directly. Licensing The LASI System has been written over a period of several years, mostly for the author's own professional use, and therefore was not intended as profit-making software. For this reason, LASI is free for educational use in order to foster IC design as a heuristic exercise and a true art. It is also free for non- profit applications by individuals. However, if LASI.EXE (or LASIA.EXE) is used to MAKE A PROFIT, then a VOLUNTARY license fee of $99 PER COMPUTER on which it is installed is requested. This license is for a period of ONE YEAR and should be made payable to the author. When LASI is licensed, FREE UPDATES including any NEW PROGRAMS will be provided during the license period, and will continue to be provided if the license is renewed. This fee is not just to ease the conscience of someone making a profit and using LASI for free, but helps to pay for improving LASI with new hardware and software and sending out updates to everyone. The fee is not expected to be a compensation for the endless hours of coding and debugging that have gone into producing LASI. Terms of Liability The LASI System is constantly being revised and is distributed on an "as is" basis. Since the programs are quite complicated, software bugs may be found, often when someone does something that only rarely would be done. If you have what you think is a real bug, then report it, and an attempt will be made to fix it. Neither the author nor any person distributing the LASI System assumes any responsibility for whomever uses the programs or for how the programs are used. Also, neither the author nor any person distributing the software assumes any liability for any losses monetary or otherwise incurred related to the use of the programs. Final Comment With the proper software, personal computers have easily become adequate for small to medium sized IC layout applications. LASI can give everyone a personal computer based work station. Although it may be used that purpose, LASI was not really intended for doing routine IC or ASIC design. Instead, LASI was developed as a "fundamental" drawing system, which can generate arbitrary shapes that might be needed in any kind of application. It was also intended for people who think in a particular spatial way, as anyone working with it will soon realize. Actually, LASI was really intended to put some fun and relaxation into doing layout tasks by allowing a person to work when and where they want, and therefore, it is believed, do better more creative work. Anyone using LASI for fun or profit is encouraged to contact me with any suggestions or requests for additional utility or conversion programs. Dave Boyce Dr. David E. Boyce 143B Bergdorf Rd., RR1 Parish, NY 13131, USA 315-625-7291 General Information About LASI Programs The program LASI.EXE is written in C and assembly language. The C source code consists of three separate modules containing, briefly: 1. The main(), System Mode command and utility functions 2. The Cell Mode command functions 3. The drawing, file and hardware functions. For maximum speed, the elementary graphical functions are written in assembly language. The C modules are complied using Microsoft C/C++ 7.0, and the assembly is compiled using Microsoft Macro Assembler 5.1. The four compiled object codes are linked together to form LASI.EXE as you see it. Although LASI uses mostly integer math, it does use some floating-point math during its drawing process. For this reason LASI is compiled in two different ways: 1. For use with a coprocessor, it is compiled with inline coprocessor instructions, making LASI.EXE. 2. For use without a coprocessor, it is compiled with alternate floating- point math function calls, making LASIA.EXE. LASI draws about twice as fast with a coprocessor. Some of the more complex utility programs, such as LASIDRC.EXE, are also written using C/C++ 7.0, while some of the simpler utility programs are written in Microsoft BASIC 7.1. All utility programs are compiled using alternate floating-point math function calls, so they will all run the same with or without a coprocessor. Advanced Installation Once you have mastered getting LASI going and probably know what you are doing, you can "customize" LASI to your particular hardware or drawing style. To do this you can set certain parameters in the FORM.DBD file as follows: 1. If you have an appropriate line printer or plotter, set the FORM.DBD file's "hcopy=" and "plot=" parameters to allow hard copies and plots to be made. Use EDLIN.COM or MS-DOS 5's EDIT to change the FORM.DBD file, to prevent any word processor formatting characters from being inserted into the FORM.DBD file. Read the Form File topic and the HCPY Command topic. 2. Set the allocation parameters "rank=","box=",path=",vtx=" and "cell=" in the FORM.DBD files to the desired amounts. If you don't know how many you need to allocate, use the default values. Read the Allocating Memory topic. 3. If you have extended memory, install a RAM disk by putting the driver into your CONFIG.SYS file. Turn on the RAM disk provision by setting the "rdisk=" parameter in the FORM.DBD file to the letter of the RAM disk. Read the Using RAM Disk topic. 4. Once you have been using LASI for some time you will have some favorite commands that you use often. You can write these into the FORM.DBD file under the "fkey=" parameter, and further customize LASI to your own way of working. Read the Key Assignment topic. Allocating Memory A LASI drawing is made out of boxes, paths, polygons, text and cells, which are collectively called OBJECTS. The data for these objects is kept in what is known as conventional memory, the memory from 0K to 640K bytes. The LASI.EXE program is loaded at some low address determined by the DOS system. LASI.EXE will use about 235K, and the remaining memory space can be used for drawing data. Conventional Memory Map: Drawing Data small prgms. DOS+TSRs LASI.EXE (free in System Mode) or more data ├───────────┼────────────┼────────────────────────┼──────┤ 0K <Minimum> <≈235K > <≈310K> <64K> 640K The partitioning of the data memory space between various types of objects is written MANUALLY by the user into the FORM.DBD file. In future versions of LASI there may be a memory management system that allocates memory dynamically by blocks on demand. Since the applications for LASI or even the drawing habits of the user can vary considerably, the required numbers of each type of object can also vary. For instance, when doing an IC layout drawing, you might use boxes heavily. If a schematic is being drawn, polygons and text will be used more often. When LASI starts it reads the Form File and allocates a fixed number of each type of object. The number can usually be increased if necessary, and warnings occur if a limit is reached. There is an automatic limit on the maximum number of each type of object that can be allocated, but the amount of memory that can be requested by LASI with full allocations is just about all that remains of 640K of conventional memory. DOS needs at least 64K available to load almost anything at first. (It can then give memory back.) If you fill your memory, you won't be able to call some other small programs from LASI, such as the screen hardcopiers, or even help. To make the most memory space available, you should minimize the "resident" programs (TSRs) and drivers that you install when booting up your computer. With the newer DOS's you can load much of your resident software into high memory. Read the MS-DOS 5 topic. You can also gain quite a bit of memory by using one of the better memory managers such as QEMM-386 or 386MAX, which move TSRs and drivers into high memory more effectively than DOS. You should be relieved to know, however, that most drawings can be done with nowhere near the maximum number of objects permitted. Particularly, if you properly use cell nesting. That is, you use the wise practice of making repetitious drawing sections into cells. Additionally, LASI in System Mode gives back the memory allocated for objects anyway, so that larger programs can be called from System Mode than from Cell Mode. Boxes are allocated independently. You will tend to use boxes in some situations where rectangular patterns are favored, such as making simple transistors in an IC layout. In that case, you will probably allocate many boxes. Each box uses 10 bytes of memory. Paths and vertices although dependent are allocated independently because there is no really good relationship between them. Each path requires at least 2 vertices, but after that the number of vertices per path will depend on what shapes you make. Curved figures can use many vertices, but paths used for orthogonal interconnections will use just a few. LASI and the various utility programs treat paths and vertex numbers as virtually unrelated. Each path uses 6 bytes of memory, and each vertex uses 8 bytes of memory. It has become a practice on larger CAD systems to use nothing but polygons and eliminate boxes. If you work that way, allocate very few boxes so that memory will available for paths and vertices. The depth to which you intend to nest cells is set by the user in the Form File as the maximum RANK. The required number of cells depends on the depth to which you nest your drawings. The maximum rank that you set is used to divide the total memory space available to cells. If you set the maximum rank low, you GET more cells per rank; if the maximum rank is set high, you NEED less cells per rank. You can save memory by not setting the maximum rank higher than you will ever use. For each rank you require memory space for the number of cells allocated. Usually setting rank to 4 or 5 is sufficient. Each cell uses 6 bytes multiplied by the maximum number of ranks. Read the Form File topic for more information. Attached Cells A cell that is kept in a common cell pool that is shared among several drawings is called an ATTACHED cell. The attached cell will be draw normally, but will follow certain rules and will have some special properties: Attached cells are protected and may NOT be changed using Cell Mode. Attached cells must have the same physical scaling as the drawing. Attached cells must fit within the allocated numbers of boxes, paths and vertices in the FORM.DBD file. Attached cells may NOT be renamed with the RENAM command. Attached cells are searched for in the pool directory only, while normal cells are searched for in the drawing directory only. If a cell file (BP4) is not found, a "null" cell is drawn. LASI draws a null cell as a dotted outline. A null cell is different from a cell that has nothing in it in that there is no BP4 file for a null cell. Attached cells may be added to the drawing directory in two ways: 1. You can use the System Mode IMPORT command and give the imported cell the SAME NAME. This copies the cell's BP4 file to the drawing directory and turns the attached cell into a normal cell. 2. You can use the IMPORT command and give the copied cell a NEW NAME. This is preferred if you are going to modify the cell and use it in a few places. Attached cells may be smashed using the SMSH command. This effectively adds an attached cell's boxes and paths to the current cell. Attached cells may be used in the MAKE command. They will be added to the new cell as would any other cell, but they will still be attached cells. The commands OUTL, FULL, IDEN and SHOW work on attached cells. If you are using a RAM disk, the first time you draw a attached cell it will be copied to the RAM disk. It will still remain protected but will draw faster. Attached cell names appear in red in the LIST command cell listing. Cells with rank greater than 1 may be attached, but only the boxes, poly and paths will be drawn and the cell will be forced to rank 1. The reason for this is that LASI presently uses pointers to cells in its cell placement data. These pointers would be different for different drawings. The TLC program must be used to install any cells containing other cells. More often, cells containing other cells are usually drawing specific and would not be shared with other drawings anyway. Archiving It is highly recommended that you keep current backups or archives of your drawings. You should use the TLC external data format. The TLC format is written in ASCII text, and is very forgiving. It may in fact be written or repaired using a text editor. To dump a complete drawing you only need to run TLC.EXE in a drawing directory, or alternately, to dump only a certain cell, give it the name of the that cell and TLC.EXE will make all the required cells. Backup TLC files may be written directly to a floppy disk if they will all fit, or they can be written to a hard disk and then to one or more floppy disks. Once TLC files are made, a complete drawing or individual cells can be reconstructed if necessary. It might be said that TLC is the true way of storing LASI drawings. The internal data files (BP4 and CL4 files) are really a convenience to reduce the startup time for LASI. Read the TLC Conversion topic. Backups LASI contains an amount of protection against drawing loss. It will write your latest drawing files to your hard disk at certain times so that if the computer is turned off or fails, or you simply make a mistake or change your mind, your drawing will survive. Whenever you exit Cell Mode all files are updated on the hard disk. This includes the BP4 and CL4 files for the particular cell and the CELLS4.DBD and CONSTS4.DBD files. This happens even if you are using a RAM disk for temporary file storage. There are two files CELLBKUP.BP4, CELLBKUP.CL4 that store your cell as it was when you enter Cell Mode. These may be used to return a cell to the same state that it was when you entered Cell Mode. Also, there are two files SORTBKUP.BP4 and SORTBKUP.CL4 that are updated when you use the SORT command. You may use these files to restore if you make a major mistake. These files are also updated by a timed automatic sort that protects your drawing even if you leave it unattended for a while and someone comes by and turns off the computer. Finally, there are two files DSBKUP.BP4 and DSBKUP.CL4 that are updated whenever you use the DEL or the SMSH command. You may recover from an accidental delete or smash using these files. Command Menus Most operations are done by selecting a command from a menu on the side of the screen. The mouse cursor will turn into a box around the command that will be chosen. Clicking the right mouse button activates the command. In Cell Mode there are two different menus. To flip between them, simply click the right mouse button with the cursor in the drawing window, not in the menu area. In Cell Mode the current resident command is shown at the top center of the screen. The colors usually mean something. Generally the cyan commands affect boxes and paths, the yellow affect cells, and the green both, with many exceptions. Commands intended to stand out are generally red. Some commands are colored just to look pretty or give good contrast. Command Types The commands that are found on the menus do many things. The commands all have help topics in Command Information. The System Mode commands either operate immediately or request additional information to be typed in. The commands may be aborted or continued to completion. Cell Mode commands may be grouped into four types: 1. RESIDENT commands are commands that stay in place until you change to another resident command. There is always a default resident command when working on a drawing. Examples of resident commands are: ADD, GET, PUT, CGET and CPY. 2. ONE-TIME commands are commands that abort any other commands that may be in progress, but are not retained. Examples of ONE-TIME commands are: SORT, FILL, LAYR, and OBJ. 3. WINDOW commands are commands that change the window that is displayed. These commands are nestable within a resident command. For example, you can reposition the window an unlimited number of times while you still have the second point of a MOV pending. The command listed at the top of the display changes color to tell you that you are in a nested command that is asking for an input. The window commands are: ARROWS, CNTR, DGRD, DRAW, FIT, GRID, OCTO, OPEN, RDRW, VIEW, WGRD, RSTR, SAVE, XPND and ZOOM. 4. DOS commands are commands that run other programs with LASI as the shell. These commands can cause "out of memory" or "not available" errors if you don't have enough RAM available. The DOS commands are: DOS, HCPY, PLOT, TLC-IN, TLC-OUT and help F1. In System Mode, information is requested at the left of the screen. In Cell Mode information is usually requested on the last line. Any default values, shown in parentheses, will be retained by pressing ENTER or ESC. Usually, ENTER continues the command and ESC aborts the command. Important: Any command that is expecting a cursor input point can be cancelled by selecting the same command, a new command or by pressing ESC. Window commands can be cancelled within a resident command without cancelling the resident command. Common Problems When LASI is started it checks for the FORM.DBD file, the CONSTS4.DBD file, the CELLS4.DBD file and the Text Font File (usually TXT.DBD). It also checks the hardware for the mouse and the kind of video adapter you have. If there is a problem LASI should tell you. This may not be perfect and if you crash first suspect the CONSTS4.DBD file. It may be incorrect. Simply erase it from your drawing directory. LASI will make a new one. CONSTS4.DBD files made with older versions of LASI are not guaranteed to work with newer versions of LASI. If you crash or you get a "Not Available" message, when running programs such as TLC.EXE or LASI2HP.EXE with LASI.EXE as the shell, you probably have run out of conventional memory. Downsize the allocated space for boxes etc. to reduce your memory requirements by changing the settings in the FORM.DBD file. LASI checks memory, and refuses to execute if it thinks that there is too little available, but it is not perfect because it really doesn't know how much memory a program needs. DOS eventually determines this. The LASI System is a very complex and evolving system. It is possible that situations will occur with different hardware and software environments that will cause difficulties. Once authentic problems are reported they are usually fixed. Consult the author or your source of this software for the latest version. Drawing Display When operating in Cell Mode the drawing area occupies most of the screen. The command menu appears on the right of the screen, and status information is displayed on the top and bottom of the screen. ┌─ Cell(Rank)── Command (Point)──── Cursor Position ──┬─────────┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Drawing Area │ Menu │ │ │ Area │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ (Active Count etc.) │ │ ├─ View(layers)── Open(layers)─────────── Indicators ─┤ │ └─ wGrid ── dGrid ── Object ── Layer ── Width ────────┴─────────┘ (Input and Messages) The top status line shows the name of the cell and its rank on the left. Near the center is the name of the current command and the point to be inputted. Commands usually display in cyan, but nested "window" commands display in red. The top line also shows the current position of the mouse cursor. The lowercase "w" or "u" prefixing X or Y indicates that the cursor is in the "working" or the "unit" grid. The upper bottom line shows the layers that are viewed and open for modification, and at the extreme right, the status of the cell outline name, the path center line and the text reference keyboard toggle switches. (Read Key Assignment and the OUTL, DRAW and TEXT Commands.) The upper bottom line may also display other information, such as the number of active objects or IDEN command information. The lower bottom line normally displays the working and dotted grids, the name or type of object that will be added with the ADD command, the layer if the object is a box or path, and the width of the path. The lower bottom line also serves as an input line for various keyboard inputs, such as direct X and Y coordinate inputs or text string inputs. The bottom line also displays certain warning messages that may be sent to indicate a problem, for example, "RAM Disk Full or Unavailable ...", which can occur quite often. When the bottom two lines return to their normal status information, this indicates that a command has been successfully completed (or aborted) and LASI is waiting for a new command. Drawing Speed On a fairly slow computer, drawing a large number of cells can take a considerable amount of time. LASI has several features to allow you to work on larger drawings more effectively. These are as follows: 1. Pressing the ESC key or clicking the right mouse button causes a drawing sequence to abort in two stages. The first stage forces cells to be drawn as lightly dashed outlines. The second stops the present cell's boxes and paths from being drawn. You don't have to draw completely if you only want to locate a certain area. Just find where the area is, abort further drawing and ZOOM in. 2. Cells may be replaced by their outline, which draws almost instantly. Read the OUTL and FULL Command topics. 3. Objects that are too small to draw may be skipped by setting the resolution properly. Read the SET Command topic. 4. Objects that are out of a drawing window are remembered and are skipped for certain commands. 5. The cell files may be (and should be) automatically transferred to a RAM disk. Read the RAM Disk topic. Note: If you speed up drawing using first method, active box sides and active vertices are still drawn or marked, and active cells are still drawn as filled outlines. This is to indicate where an active object is located. Error Messages Most messages are self-evident and appear in the dialog area in System Mode, on the bottom line in Cell Mode, or on the top line in both modes when DOS calls are made. Most error messages due to memory limitations are less obvious and are as follows: "Not Enough Memory!" means that you have run out of memory when starting LASI. You are requesting too much memory in your FORM parameters. "Not Available!" means that LASI will not act as a "shell" to execute other programs ("child" processes). If so, downsize your Form File allocations if you can. "Rank Error!" means that you are trying to enter a cell that has a higher rank than the limit that you have set in your Form File, or you are trying to add a cell that has rank greater than or equal to the cell on which you ar working. "No Object!" means that you are trying to set an object to be added that cannot be found in the cell list. "Not Enough Space to Load CELLNAME OBJECTS!" means that you have too little space allocated to properly load a cell file. "OBJECT Limit Reached!" means that you are trying to add an object that exceeds the allocation for its type. "Not Enough Space to Smash CELLNAME!" means that there isn't enough space allocated to hold the objects that would result if a cell is smashed. "RAM Disk Full or Unavailable ... Using Hard Disk!" means that you either have set a RAM disk in the FORM.DBD file that doesn't exist, or the RAM disk has run out of space for new files or new filenames. You should erase old files from your RAM disk or, if possible, reconfigure it in the DOS CONFIG.SYS file to provide more file space or a larger directory. File Types LASI.EXE uses several files when it is run. These are: DBD (drawing basic data) files CELLS4.DBD is the master list of cells used by LASI.EXE to know which cells it has to use in a drawing. The position of a cell in the file is an index used by LASI.EXE to keep track of which cells are used in other cells. FORM.DBD contains the configuration information used by LASI.EXE when it starts. Read the Form File topic. CONSTS4.DBD is a file that is maintained by LASI.EXE itself, and contains the information (or constants) that determine the immediate settings of many parameters. Although it is ASCII this file should not be edited. TXT.DBD is a generic Text Font File. This file is a binary file that contains patterns for the text characters. This file was generated by the MAKETXT.EXE utility and can only be modified using that utility. Otherwise, the user is free to make his own fonts following the directions under the topic Text Generation. Cell Data Files Cell data files are named with the name of a cell with a BP4 or a CL4 extension. BP4 files are internal binary files that contain information on boxes, paths, text and vertices. These files are maintained by LASI.EXE and other utilities and are not to be externally edited. CL4 files are internal files that contain information on which cells are contained in other cells. Rank 1 cells do not produce these files. These files are not to be externally edited. Form File The configuration information for each drawing is in the FORM.DBD file. This file MUST be in each drawing directory. You write it using a text editor in standard DOS text format. The FORM.DBD file is an IMPORTANT file because it is used by LASI.EXE and most of the UTILITY PROGRAMS to configure to the particular drawing environment. The FORM parameters are keywords followed by "=" and then the FORM variable. These may be in any order, or be omitted. If a parameter is omitted a default parameter is used if possible. The present FORM parameters are: hdisk=C:,D:,etc. (\LASI4 directory hard disk letter name) rdisk=D:,etc. or blank (RAM disk letter name) fdisk=A: or B: (floppy disk letter name) rank=2-15 (maximum rank available) box=6500 max. (maximum number of boxes per cell) path=8100 max. (maximum number of paths per cell) vtx=32700 max. (maximum number of vertices per cell) cell=10900/(rank-1) max. (maximum number of cells per cell) hcopy=XXXX (name of bitmap program to be used) plot=XXXX (name of plotter support program) text=XXXX (name of Text Font File) vmode=vga,ega,svga,mono (forces the display mode) pool=pool directory (name of cell pool directory) fkey=command line (progressively assigns F-keys) "hdisk=" sets the letter name of the hard disk where the \LASI4 directory is located and is used to find certain files. "rdisk=" sets the letter name of a RAM disk that was created in memory. Read the Using RAM Disk topic for more information. "fdisk=" variable sets the letter name of the default floppy drive where certain files are routinely imported and exported. Read the TLC-IN and TLC-OUT topics. "box=", "path=", "vtx=", "cell=" and "rank=" allocate memory space for the respective objects. These are limited automatically individually, but you can run out of total memory due to your computer's memory limitations. "hcopy=" is the name of the screen hardcopy program. Read the HCPY Command topic for information on these programs. Important: If you don't have a printer on the computer leave the hardcopy parameter "hcopy=" blank. This will prevent the system from possibly hanging up if HCPY is pushed. "plot=" is the name of the plotter program. At the present there is only one plotter program LASI2HP.EXE. "text=" is the name of the Text Font File. If this parameter is left blank or if it is left out of the Form File altogether, the name "\LASI4\TXT.DBD" will be assumed. Note that this variable may contain a DOS path. This allows you to make your own Text Font Files and put them in any directory. "vmode=" overrides the automatic sensing of VGA or EGA hardware. You may set this to "ega", "vga", "svga" or "mono", providing your hardware can work in that mode. "vga" and "ega" force 640x480 or 640x350 16 color graphics mode. "svga" forces 800x600 16 color VESA standard graphics mode. You must have the hardware and the driver software that conforms to the VESA standard or you will probably crash. "mono" redefines the 640x480 color palette to black, gray, white and bright white for use with monochrome monitors and laptops. Any forced parameter may be followed by two floating point numbers separated by spaces. Example: "vmode=svga 1.5 .75" These numbers set the "mouse sensitivity" (or mickey multiplier) for the x and y axes respectively. These numbers default to 1 if omitted. Set these numbers to whatever feels best with your mouse. "pool=" sets the directory where pooled cells are stored. If the pool directory is on a different disk than the drawing directory, precede the directory name with the disk letter. Omit "\" from the end of the pool directory name. If you don't have a pool directory leave this parameter blank or erase it from FORM.DBD altogether. "fkey=" parameters progressively assign a command line to a function key, starting with F2 (F1 is always HELP.) through F10, SHIFT-F1 through SHIFT-F10, CTRL-F1 through CTRL-F10 and ALT-F1 through ALT- F10. Read the F-keys topic for more details. FORM is a command on the menus. It lists the FORM parameters of the drawing directory where you are working. The FORM command also lists the approximate amount of memory that you have left in conventional memory when all the space for objects is allocated. Use this as a guide when setting your allocation parameters. Hardcopy Hardcopies of the drawing display can be made by calling screen bitmap printing programs. These are small programs that are included with the LASI System. These hardcopy programs can send the bitmap data directly to a printing device or can produce a file for later printing. Any hardcopy program is installed by including its name in the "hcopy=" parameter in the FORM.DBD file. Hardcopy programs are always kept in the \LASI4 directory. When LASI calls a hardcopy program, it attaches that path to the filename. Presently there are 2 hardcopy programs in the \LASI4 directory: 1. DMHCPY.COM makes a black and white copy of the screen in standard Epson FX or LQ dot matrix format. There are 4 arguments (upper or lowercase) that may be appended to the "hcopy=dmhcpy" parameter in the FORM.DBD file: "F" which causes a bitmap data file to be produced "Q" which causes LQ format to be produced "H" which causes a heavier copy to be made by duplicating any dots printed "G" which turns on "generic" printer codes that will work with almost any IBM/Epson printer. Aspect ratios will be not be 1:1. These arguments may be in any order. For example, "hcopy=dmhcpy h q f" produces a file with heavy printing for an LQ type printer. If you are making a data file, a small window will open and close in the lower left of the screen requesting a file name. If you produce files in the Epson FX printer format. You can build single or multiple sheet fax files for transmission using an Intel SatisFAXion board. You can also translate the files into other formats using a converter such as HIJAAK. If you are operating in VGA graphics mode, the hardcopy that you get will have a correct 1:1 aspect ratio, that is, if you don't use the "G" argument. 2. LJHCPY.COM makes a black and white copy on a LaserJet or a DeskJet type printer. The bitmap is produced at 75 dots/in. LJHCPY.COM produces a data file if a command line argument "F" (or "f") is appended to the "hcopy=ljhcpy" parameter in the FORM.DBD file. This data file may converted to other formats, or copied to a LaserJet for printing later. Read the HCPY Command topic. Hardware The LASI will run in some configuration on almost any IBM compatible computer with the right hardware options. A faster computer is always an advantage. LASI will run quite nicely on a 386 or 486 based PC with clock speed 25 MHz or more. This is the minimum hardware required: 1. 640K of conventional memory 2. A hard disk 3. VGA or EGA adaptor and color monitor 4. A mouse 5. A math coprocessor (see below) 640K of Conventional Memory The main program LASI.EXE takes a minimum of about 235K. Drawing data is kept in conventional memory also, so if you don't have full memory, the size of your drawing will be excessively memory limited. You will also not be able to run certain programs from LASI.EXE. Using extended memory and MS-DOS 5 (or newer) from Microsoft or DR-DOS 6.0 from Digital Research will improve this situation because these operating systems move drivers to high memory. Read the Allocating Memory topic for more information on use of memory. Hard Disk While working on a drawing, the basic drawing files (or cell files) need to be swapped back and forth to the disk. The hard disk should be as fast as possible. Each cell may use one or two files for storage. One cell file can be as large as 384K, the other 64K. Files this large will be rare, if not impossible due to RAM limitations. However, for large drawings with many cells, a total of several megabytes of disk space may still be needed. EGA or VGA Adaptor with Color Monitor LASI.EXE uses some direct hardware access so the EGA or VGA board must be register compatible to the IBM standard. If you have VGA graphics, the VGA will default to VGA 640x480 16 color graphics mode. If you have EGA you will default to 640x350 graphics mode. You may override the automatic default by setting the "vmode=" parameter in the Form File. If you have a VGA board and a monitor capable of 800x600 16 color graphics, you can run LASI in that mode by setting "vmode=svga" in the Form File. You must have a board that is VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association) compatible with supplemental driver software (furnished by the board's maker), or the board must have a BIOS that is directly compatible with the VESA standard. Most new boards will meet one of these requirements. If you have a monochrome monitor or a laptop computer with a gray scale VGA (or EGA) display, you can redefine the color palette to black, gray, white and bright white by setting "vmode=mono" in the Form File. This allows "poor people" with only analog VGA monochrome monitors to run LASI. You may have to trick your VGA board into thinking that it has a color monitor by grounding the ID bit 0 (pin 11 on the 15 pin D connector). Laptop computers with sufficient capacity will also run LASI. A possible problem when using a laptop is that the LCD display often isn't fast enough to track the mouse cursor. Because LASI.EXE writes directly to the hardware, you will get faster graphics if you use a 16-bit graphics board, instead of an 8-bit board. In ISA (AT) type computers of any CPU speed, the bus speed is usually still 8 MHz. This limits the drawing speed of LASI and most of any other graphical software, including Windows or OS/2. There are also some new bus architectures that raise the bus speed when servicing video, or have an independent high-speed bus, such as the VESA Local Bus (VL-Bus). If your graphics board can work at a higher speed or is VESA Local Bus compatable, your LASI drawing speed will greatly improve. If you are buying a computer to run LASI (or anything else), it is recommended you get one with a VESA Local Bus. Some manufacturers have their own proprietary bus; it is likely that these will die out and the VESA Bus will be standard. Note also that "accelerated" video boards are available, but are often designed to speed up Windows or specific CAD systems, like AutoCAD, using special driver software. These may not help LASI very much. Mouse Pretty much everything is done graphically by mouse. All mouse function calls conform to Microsoft Mouse Protocol. LASI.EXE does little more than look for button pushes and return screen location. The cursors are drawn directly, so LASI is very mouse tolerant. Any mouse that has at least two buttons, has driver software that works with EGA or VGA, and understands some basic Microsoft mouse driver function calls (numbers 0-5, 10 and 11) should work with any of the LASI System programs. To use the mouse, first be sure that the mouse driver software that came with your mouse is installed according to your mouse's instructions, and that you know that the mouse works with most other programs. Using current Microsoft mouse driver software and a Microsoft compatible mouse is usually best. LASI.EXE reads "mickeys" directly (actual movement count) and moves the cursor accordingly. Certain mouse driver sensitivity switches (/H /V) won't work when this is done, but sensitivity can be sent in the FORM.DBD file. Read the Form File topic. Math Coprocessor (80287, 80387, etc) Most of the math is done in integer form, which is handled by the CPU directly. A certain amount of floating point arithmetic is also done. If you try to run LASI.EXE without a coprocessor, the program will return a system error. If you don't have a coprocessor and can't afford one, another version of LASI, LASIA.EXE is provided that uses alternate math function calls and is about half as fast in certain situations as LASI.EXE. Optional but desirable: 1. Extended memory 2. A printer (dot matrix or laser) Extended Memory In addition to using less conventional memory if a newer DOS is used, drawing speed may be improved by using extended memory for a RAM disk. The amount of additional memory is dependent on the amount of data in the layout drawings that you make. Experience will determine how much memory you need. Read the Using RAM Disk topic. Printer Hard copies of the screen can be made directly from LASI.EXE. Making hardcopies is very handy to examine and keep track of your drawings. Hardcopy support is provided for Epson Generic, FX and LQ type printers and H-P LaserJet type printers. Most printers seem to conform to these standards. Read the HCPY Command topic. If your printer doesn't work contact the author to see if anything can be done about it, providing you have technical information available on your printer and you know that it is capable of bitmap graphics. Help on Help If you are reading this help topic you are probably running the help reader program LHI.EXE. LHI is called from LASI by pressing F1. If the mouse cursor is on a COMMAND NAME the name will be passed to LHI and that command's help information will come up immediately. LHI.EXE will also accept DOS command line arguments as follows: [] = optional LHI [disk\path\filename] [topic1 or topic2] [topic2] [Disk\path\filename] is the full name of the help file to read. The filename must contain the extension ".HLP" or the argument will be considered as a topic argument. Leaving this argument out causes a default to "\lasi4\lhi.hlp". The [topic1 or topic2] argument is the topic for the first search. This may be a primary topic such as "Command Information" or a secondary topic such as "Copy". If the topic is more than one word enclose it in double quotes ("") as DOS requires. The [topic2] argument is the subtopic of topic1. This is only necessary if topic2 appears as a subtopic of topic1 in more than one place in the help file. For example, if "Introduction" appears more than once, you must specify the primary topic as topic1 and then "Introduction" as topic2. All arguments may be upper or lower case. Key Assignment Some keys on the keyboard are permanently assigned: ENTER enters information. DIRECTION ARROWS move the drawing window in that direction. TAB toggles the cursor between a small cross and crosshairs. A toggles the cursor between working and unit grid. C toggles the path center line on and off. (retained) N toggles the outline name on and off. T toggles the text reference point on and off. (retained) X or Y opens a PKE entry. Z sets the measurement reference point. SPACE gives a measurement from the reference point. ALT while pressed changes the cursor between working and unit grid. ESC has multiple uses: 1. Press ESC to abort most commands at any stage of completion. 2. Press ESC to abort drawing at various stages. Read the Drawing Speed topic for details. 3. Pressing ESC causes a default value to be retained in any input that has a default value shown in parentheses, even if a new value has been typed. 4. ESC returns a NULL (no characters) to such questions as the name of a cell and therefore aborts the process. F1 always calls HELP. The remaining function keys are USER DEFINABLE. F2-F10, SHIFT-F1 through SHIFT-F10, CTRL-F1 through CTRL-F10 and ALT-F1 through ALT-F10 may be defined by writing a command with any arguments into the FORM.DBD file. To assign the keys you simply write the command after an "fkey=" parameter in the FORM.DBD file. Keys are assigned progressively and the exact assignment can be checked by the FORM command. A command must be a command from the Cell Mode menus and must be followed by any arguments separated by commas. examples: "fkey=view,1-4 10 12" makes those layers visible. "fkey=wmov,0,0,100,100,0,0,10,0" moves objects in the 0,0 to 100,100 rectangle 10 physical units to the right. The command line may be upper or lower case and no longer than 80 characters. Any coordinates are in physical units. Any text generated in this way will be created with case preserved. Commands assigned to function keys are executed on a ONE-TIME basis even though normally the command may be a resident type of command. Function keys work differently in System Mode, so no System Mode command may be assigned to a function key. Certain commands in Cell Mode work differently also and may no be assigned to function keys. These are LIST, CELL, SYS and ABRT. LASI should be smart enough to request additional arguments in the normal way if you list too few in the key assignment, or throw away any extras if you have too many. Coordinates are always requested in pairs. Local Area Network It should be possible to use the cell pooling feature of LASI 4.1 to provide a common pool of basic cells over a Local Area Network (LAN) consisting of several PCs or work stations. Put the network server disk directory prefix in the "pool=" parameter in the FORM.DBD file. LASI will then load an attached cell's BP4 file from the server. If you are using a RAM disk locally, the file will then be stored on the RAM disk the first time you draw it, and will remain there until you quit LASI. You can also make a permanent copy of a pooled cell from the network using the IMPORT command. For transferring cells with rank greater than 1, you must use TLC.EXE. In that case, the "fdisk=" parameter in FORM.DBD can be set to the server directory prefix with TLC files in that directory on the server. Any files transferred by TLC will become normal cells not attached cells. Care also must be taken not to write back to the server, since TLC works both ways. Measurements The position of the cursor in the drawing window is continuously read out at the top of the screen. The coordinates are either in working grid units or in the smallest possible grid unit, the unit grid. You may switch between these by pressing the A or ALT keys. There is no ruler, but distances can be measured graphically. The Z key zeroes the measurement system to the current cursor grid point. The current cursor grid point may be either in the working grid or the unit grid, depending on the resident command or if the cursor grid has been switched by the A or ALT keys. If the space bar is then pressed, a measurement from the zero point will be displayed at the bottom of the screen. The second point will be gridded to the present cursor grid. Mouse Cursor LASI is designed to be very mouse intensive. Positioning the cursor and clicking the mouse buttons chooses the commands and inputs most all the graphical information. The exceptions being when a literal or numerical input is required, or when a specially assigned key is used. The mouse cursor is usually a small cross that may have other figures added to it. When on a menu, a box will appear that indicates which command will be chosen. When using drawing commands dotted lines or a dotted rectangle will appear. The cursor can be toggled between the small cross and crosshair lines by pressing the TAB key. The cursor automatically turns back to the small cross if not on the drawing window. When a cursor input is expected, the point needed will be shown at the top of the screen after the command name. Most commands take one or two points. The cursor moves in discrete steps. When a command is chosen, the cursor is set to move either in the unit grid or in one of a number of preset working grids. The working grids are entered using the SET command, and are changed with the WGRD command. The cursor's grid type may change from command to command or during a command, but it may always be toggled from one type of grid to the other by pressing either the A or the ALT key on the keyboard. Certain cell commands use a DOUBLE CLICKING of the left mouse button to change the way that the command acts on cells. If you click twice rapidly, the cells that overlap the mouse cursor points will be affected. If you wait a bit between clicks, only the cells that have their areas fully enclosed by the mouse cursor window will be affected. The time between mouse clicks is set as the number of "ticks" using the SET command in Cell Mode. Each tick is about 1/20 sec. Adjust this to your own comfort. The number of ticks is saved and returned when you restart LASI. Hint: If you want to turn off double clicking entirely, set the number of ticks to 0. If you always want double clicking actions, set the number of ticks to a large number, such as 32000. Objects A drawing is built of things called OBJECTS. In a drawing objects are placed in a hierarchy, the position of an object in this hierarchy is called its RANK. The lowest rank (0) objects are the basic constructions, BOXES, PATHS, POLYGONS and TEXT. The higher rank (1-15) objects are the CELLS, which are the basic structures of a drawing. Any cell can contain one or more objects of lesser rank. All the cells in a drawing are called the CELL COLLECTION. Boxes Boxes are objects that have the properties of four sides, each orthogonal to the adjacent, and a layer. Only the position of the sides and the layer may be changed. Paths Paths are a set of vertices in some order which display as a set of endwise merged rectangles, all with the same width, but usually different lengths. A path with a zero width is called a polygon (poly). A polygon is special case of a path, and the term "path" can be used to refer to either, except in the case where a zero width path is explicitly indicated. A polygon need not be closed. A line of zero width however usually does not reproduce anything useful in an integrated circuit, so polygons will usually be closed intentionally. Vertices may have their position changed, and the vertices of a path may be added or deleted. The width or layer of the path may be changed. Paths with a positive width are drawn with their ends flush with their end vertices, while paths with negative widths are drawn with their ends spaced out half the width from the vertices. Paths with negative width are discouraged and are provided only for CALMA compatibility. A path with width can have no more than 250 vertices. A polygon can have no more than 500 vertices. Text Text is a form of path that instead of displaying vertices, displays a string of text characters linearly. Text is stored as a special path, and many of the commands that affect paths work on text objects. Text can have a layer and a size which corresponds to a path's width. There are 64 layers available for boxes, paths and text, numbered 1-64. Cells All drawing is done on cells. A cell has a NAME by which it is called for drawing or for insertion into other cells. The name must be acceptable as a DOS filename, since cell files will be made using that name. A cell is named when it is created, but it may be renamed. A rank is also assigned when a cell is created and cannot be changed, although a cell can be copied to a different rank. Cell ranking is strictly enforced so that computer memory usage is better controlled and ambiguous constructions (i.e. cells in themselves) are avoided. In general, the overall layout drawing will be the highest ranking cell. There however may be many cells of that rank, for perhaps different versions of the same integrated circuit. Cells have a property known as AREA. The area of a cell is the region within the rectangle that fully encloses all the objects that make up the cell. A cell's OUTLINE is the perimeter of the area, or simply the enclosing rectangle. Cells may be drawn in full, or may be drawn as only their outline. Cells in a part of a drawing that is not currently being worked upon may be outlined to improve clarity and to speed up redrawing. When a cell is drawn as its outline it may be manipulated as though it was drawn fully. However, when cells are outlined, double clicking the mouse has no effect on the action of a command. An outlined cell must always be fully enclosed by the mouse cursor window to have any action. Read the Mouse Cursor General topic and the individual command topics. Operating Modes There are two operating modes, System Mode and Cell Mode: System Mode is a housekeeping mode which has commands for overall manipulation of cells and the control of certain drawing parameters. Cell Mode is the mode where actual drawing is done. When Cell Mode is entered a cell drawing is opened for creation or modification. Cell Mode has up to 15 ranks. The rank of Cell Mode is obtained from the cell being drawn. Each Cell Mode rank keeps separate parameters, such as window size and position, in order to simplify moving between different ranks of cells while working on a drawing. The maximum number of ranks is set in the FORM.DBD file. All Cell Modes are identical except for the ranking. Both modes have a menu of commands on the side of the screen. The commands are explained under their own help topics. When LASI is started it goes to System Mode. Using the SYS command that appears in the Cell Mode menu is the normal way to reenter System Mode from Cell Mode. Using the CELL and LIST commands which appear in both mode menus is normal way to enter Cell Mode and open another cell. Cell Mode also may be entered directly by adding the name of a cell to the command line when starting LASI. Example: "lasi flipflop" when typed in DOS runs LASI and enters into the cell named "FLIPFLOP". Read the CELL, LIST and SYS commands. PKE Feature Parallel Keyboard Entry can be done any time a command is requesting a point normally inputted by the mouse. To start a PKE entry press either the X or Y keys. The coordinate pair will appear in the lower left corner of the screen. Pressing the X or Y key clears that coordinate to zero and a new value may then be typed into that coordinate. Coordinate values may contain a decimal point or a minus sign. Corrections may be made by pressing X or Y again, clearing the value to zero, or by using the BACKSPACE key. To enter the coordinate pair press ENTER. To abort a pending PKE entry, click on any menu button using the mouse, except any of the window commands, or press ESC. Note: Some commands that require an incremental input and not an absolute position (MOV for example) accept only a single PKE distance entry instead of two mouse cursor inputs. Pooling In version 4.1 of LASI, rank 1 cells may be kept in a common "pool". This pool is a drawing directory that contains cells that might be used in many different layouts, such as logic elements or standard transistors. The basic cell BP4 file is taken either from the default drawing directory or the pool drawing directory. Cell Source Diagram: ┌───────────┐ Attached Cell BP4 │ POOL │----->-┐ File └───────────┘ | Attach | | Command | | ┌───────────┐ | IMPORT ├--->│ Drawing │ | Command | └───────────┘ V | ┌───────────┐ | BP4 │ Draw Dir. │----->-┘ File └───────────┘ Normal Cell The pool directory is set with the "pool=" parameter in the FORM.DBD file. The pool variable is the name of the directory where pooled cells are stored. Example: "pool=c:\ourpool" would be a line in FORM.DBD If the pool directory is on a different disk than the drawing directory, precede the directory name with the disk letter. Omit "\" from the end of the pool directory name. The cells are "attached" to a drawing using the ATTACH command in System Mode. The attached cells may be included in a drawing by first making them the object to be added with the OBJ command and then adding with the ADD command. Once added the attached cells may be manipulated like any other normal cell. Read the Attached Cells topic and the ATTACH and IMPORT Command topics. Pooling Old Cells It is fairly easy to replace cells made with previous versions of LASI with cells from a common pool. First, the cells to be replaced must be placed in the POOL directory cell collection. The easy way to do this is to use the TLC program to first produce TLC files and then use the TLC program to transfer the TLC files to internal form in the POOL directory. After you are sure that the cells are in the pool, you can run LASI version 4.1 in the DRAWING directory and use the ATTACH command on the cells to be taken from the pool. Once you have decided that all is correct, and you expect to never need the cell in the drawing directory again, you can simply erase the unused BP4 files from the DRAWING directory using DOS's file delete. Do NOT use the KILL command to erase cells, because this removes cells, normal or attached, completely from a drawing. If you happen to run the 4.0 version of LASI on a drawing containing attached cells, the results that you get when drawing will be somewhat unpredictable. Whatever is in the buffers at the time will be drawn in place of the attached cell. This does no harm to the drawing data unless you go into Cell Mode on one of the attached cells. Doing this will generate a BP4 file in the DRAWING directory, and the parameters of the cell in the cells list (CELLS4.DBD) will be rewritten. Fortunately, if you run LASI 4.1 again on the drawing data, the attached cell will be rerecognized and the pool cell will reappear. To correct any problem of wrong data in the cells list you can simply reATTACH the cell. You can also cautiously delete any false BP4 files that may have been placed in the DRAWING directory. Starting a Drawing This is an elaboration on Quick Starting. If you have run LASI you already know how to get LASI up and working, here are more details that you would normally go through when really using LASI seriously. To start a drawing: 1. Create a "drawing directory" as an independent directory. The drawing directory should be named for the drawing to be made. Each different drawing is kept on the hard disk by isolating it in its own directory. The drawing directory will contain certain .DBD files (drawing basic data) and the "internal" files (.BP4 and .CL4) for the cells that you create. NEVER make drawings in the \LASI4 directory. 2. Copy a FORM.DBD file to the drawing directory. The FORM.DBD file customizes LASI to the specific hardware and allocates memory for the different objects that make up a drawing. The FORM.DBD is local to a drawing directory so it can be different for each drawing. You may copy a FORM file from another drawing or use the generic one that comes with the system files. Read the Form File topic for a description of the different parameters. 3. Edit the FORM.DBD file if necessary. The FORM.DBD file is important since it configures your drawing to your hardware. You can usually use the default values in the original distribution FORM.DBD at first, but you eventually will need to change FORM.DBD using a editor such as EDLIN.COM or EDIT from MS-DOS 5. Once you establish a "normal" FORM.DBD file, you can just copy it from drawing to drawing. 4. Make the drawing directory your default directory, and run the program LASI.EXE (or LASIA.EXE if you don't have a coprocessor). The program will start in System Mode. When you first begin a drawing you should check the scale using the SCALE command and decide if the parameters are what you want. The scale really only relates the physical units in which you do a drawing to the basic units in which the drawing is actually stored. If you do not use the appropriate scale, you may create cells that have too little resolution, or too much resolution, and the overall size of your drawing will be too small. The RESIZE.EXE utility program allows the resolution or basic units used to draw cells to be changed later, but it is better to set the correct scale in the beginning. 5. If you are using the cell pooling feature of LASI 4.1 attach any pooled cells that you think you might need. You can always attach cells, but bringing in basic cells is a good place to start. 6. Use the CELL command to go to Cell Mode and create new cells. Start by drawing the lowest rank cells that will be used as building blocks for higher rank more complex cells, and eventually the overall layout. Generally, repetitive structures should be made as individual cells and used to build other cells. However, too few boxes or paths can be a waste of a cell. With experience you will develop a feel of how to partition your cell structuring. Hint: If you have a similar drawing in another directory and you have already defined the hardware and drawing parameters, you can copy the CONSTS4.DBD file into the new directory. This will save you the trouble of redefining things over again. The CELLS4.DBD file is NEVER copied from drawing to drawing since it serves as a cell reference list that is different with each drawing. For the same reason, you MAY NOT copy BP4 and CL4 files between drawings. Undoing There is no UNDO command. The reason for this is that commands operate globally on drawing objects. Since a large number of objects may be changed, it simply too cumbersome to always keep a backup of each operation. Instead, whenever you enter into Cell Mode or use the SORT, DEL or SMSH command, a backup copy of the drawing is stored on the hard disk. To retrieve the stored backup, you use the ABRT command. If you don't sort, and you leave LASI unattended, after a certain amount of time, LASI will automatically sort and backup cell drawing data on its own. Read the SORT, DEL, SMSH and ABRT Command topics. Universe The drawing area is 65536 units in each direction since positions are determined by a 16 bit integer. This drawing space might be called the drawing's universe. If objects are moved they may exceed the signed integer limits of -32768 to 32767 basic units. Objects that move beyond the limits go through "integer infinity" and reappear from the opposite direction. If this happens, you will find that objects, particularly paths, can be very distorted. To correct this, move the objects back so that all points are in the same universe. Distortions can always be corrected by a linear move if done immediately. More than one "infinity" in sequence may not be correctable. Commands affected: CPY, FLP, MOV, ORIG, WMOV, QMOV, CMOV, ROT, STEP Using MS-DOS 5 Using DOSSHELL found in MS-DOS 5 is an easy way to setup drawings when using LASI. You can make each drawing a Program Item either by itself or as a part of a Program Group. Set the "Commands" property to "lasi.exe" and the "Startup Directory" to the drawing directory. The ability to MS-DOS 5 to load drivers into the upper memory area (640K to 1MB) on a 80386 or 80486 computer should be used to save conventional memory. This will give you more memory for a larger number of LASI objects. If you have some extended memory, even on a 80286 computer, you can still gain more memory by installing HIMEM.SYS and putting "DOS=HIGH" in the CONFIG.SYS file. Using DOS's FASTOPEN.EXE can help the drawing speed by reducing the time that LASI takes to swap data in and out, either to RAM disk or hard disk. You should experiment to find which DOS features work best. If you are using another DOS such as DR-DOS, similar advice applies. Using a RAM Disk Drawing speed can be greatly improved if a RAM disk is used. Cell files that normally would be kept on a hard disk can be placed on a RAM disk by using the MS-DOS VDISK.SYS or RAMDRIVE.SYS drivers, or similar software. LASI will automatically swap cell files to a RAM disk when it draws, and then restore them to the hard disk when it is finished. To use a RAM disk you must first create the RAM disk during DOS bootup time by adding the driver to your CONFIG.SYS file. The RAM disk should be located in extended (or expanded) memory. To have LASI recognize a RAM disk, the "rdisk=" parameter of the FORM.DBD file must be the letter name of the RAM disk. For example, if the RAM disk installs as disk E:, then "rdisk=E:" would be the parameter. If you have no RAM disk installed, set the "rdisk=" parameter to the letter name of your drawing directory disk, or simply leave the "rdisk=" parameter blank, since the drawing directory is on the default disk drive. The RAM disk must be large enough to hold all the cell files in a drawing. Computers with a megabyte or more of additional memory above 640K are needed for most real work. When creating the RAM disk the driver's parameters must be set to hold both the amount of memory and the number of files expected. When LASI is run, it presently does not erase the RAM disk files. Old files may therefore clutter your RAM disk. Since it is not too hard to erase the wrong disk, possibly your hard disk, it is recommended that you make a batch file (.BAT) to erase the RAM disk when beginning a new drawing, load a mouse driver, if needed, and then run LASI. Of course, whenever you turn off the computer power, the RAM disk is erased anyway. If you do run out of RAM disk space a warning will appear on the screen. LASI will try to preserve your drawing by switching to the hard disk if it finds that the RAM disk is full. Drawing will slow down noticeably in that case. In particular, if the basic objects (boxes, paths and text) are no longer swappable to the RAM disk, you will see the hard disk being accessed if you are drawing a cell that contains other cells. If this happens, you should exit LASI, increase your RAM disk space, if possible, and rerun LASI. Important: If you do not use a RAM disk, run a disk organizing program such as Disk Optimizer or Speed Disk from Norton's Utilities on your hard disk often. If cell files become highly fragmented, the drawing time for LASI can become incredibly long. Using a Disk Cache Installing a software disk caching driver can also speed up the redrawing of cells just as using a RAM disk. The disadvantages are that you will occasionally go to the hard disk if you lose a file from the RAM cache, and you will use more RAM in the DOS program area below 640K unless your cache uses high memory for its manager. The advantage is that you will not have to worry about running out of RAM disk space. Any disk cache driver, such as SMARTDRV from Microsoft, should work. Installing the disk cache in extended memory just as with a RAM disk is preferred, and the cache size should be as large as is needed to get a good hit ratio. If you run Windows, you probably have SMARTDRV already installed, in fact, SMARTDRV.EXE 4.0 that comes with Windows 3.1 is quite good. To use a cache set the "rdisk=" parameter in FORM.DBD to the same drive letter name as your drawing directory or leave it blank. Many of the newer hard disks have caches in their hardware already. You may find that the hardware cache is adequate and that a software cache is not necessary. The best thing to do is to experiment. Using MS-Windows LASI will run under Microsoft's Windows 3.1 as a DOS Application. Each drawing can be setup by first creating a "LASI" Program Group and installing it as a Program Item using the Program Manager. When creating the Item you should enter and appropriate "Description" and a "Command Line" as disk:\LASI4\LASI.EXE, where "disk" is the disk where LASI is installed. You should enter the particular drawing directory as the "Working Directory". Since LASI is a DOS program and is rather computationally intensive, it will run best in Standard Mode, where it will run as a single activity. It probably will not run well in 386 Enhanced Mode, where it may have to share time with other programs. It must always be run as a Full Screen program. It will also be memory limited to DOS's 640K. You may have to downsize your allocations in the Form File, or you may run out of memory when running programs like TLC.EXE from LASI. It helps to install HIMEM.SYS and use only part of any extended RAM for your RAM disk (use RAMDISK.SYS), leaving room for Windows to use part of extended memory for its own use. Installing the disk cache SMARTDRV.SYS can also improve disk speed so that a RAM disk may be unnecessary. Read the Using RAM Disk topic. LASI is a DOS program with its own graphical interface. Although its displays may not be as elaborate as Windows displays, LASI functions quite a bit faster overall, particularly on slower computers. To those who are happily running LASI under DOS, running it under Windows seems to have little advantage; it in fact wastes memory. You might like to experiment however to see if there are any benefits in your own individual case. Command Information Abrt ABRT aborts the current Cell Mode cell. This command will restore either the original cell that existed when the mode was entered or the cell as it was when the last SORT, DEL or SMSH command was done. Answering anything other than "o", "s" or "d" to the "Restore ..." question cancels the ABRT command. Using the ABRT command along with the SORT, DEL or SMSH command provides and "undo" feature. Read the SORT, DEL and SMSH topics. Add ADD adds an object to the drawing. The object to be added is set initially by OBJ and is indicated at the bottom of the screen. A box requires two points at diagonally opposite corners. A path takes a vertex from each cursor input. A path adds a new vertex after the first active vertex found in the order in which the path is drawn. A cell is added with its origin at a single cursor input point. The cursor will indicate the adding action that will take place. On boxes, the box outline will be shown in dots. On paths, segments will be previewed as dotted lines. Cells are added as a single point. aGet AGET (all get) is a combination of FGET and CGET. This command acts on cells, boxes, paths and text in the same way as those commands. AGET is useful if you are MOVing, CPYing or FLPing large sections of a drawing because you can see just which object are active before the operation, and unlike WGET it will not distort paths. aPut APUT (all put) makes all boxes, paths and cells inactive. This command is for making sure that all objects are inactive. The active object count is cleared directly by this command. APUT is a handy command to make objects inactive with a single mouse button click. Arc ARC calls the arc generator. Rules for making arcs: An arc is generated starting at the first active vertex found on a path, and is swung around an arc center point to an end point. The center and end points are single cursor input points. The number of segments and the direction of generation (cw or ccw) must be entered when requested. To start an arc from nothing you must first add a single active vertex and then call the generator. The arc takes its width and layer from the original path object or "arc seed". Arc internal points are made to the nearest unit grid. Arc end points are snapped to the nearest working grid. Hint: If you are generating an arc with many vertices, you can speed up the process by pressing ESC or clicking the right mouse button, bypassing drawing. Arrows Up, down, left and right arrows pan the drawing window. The window is moved by a certain fraction of its width in the indicated direction. The display is redrawn. The arrow keys on the keyboard perform this same function to be consistent with other drawing systems. Read DRAW. Attach ATTACH installs a cell from a common cell pool in a drawing's cell collection. ATTACH will first search to find if a cell already exists in the drawing. If one is found you will be ask if you want to continue. If a cell is not found, it will be immediately added to the cell collection. ATTACH will turn a normal cell into an attached cell, but the attached cell must exist in the pool directory. Higher rank cells may be attached but you will only get the boxes, poly and paths of the cell, and the cell will changed to a rank 1 cell. If the "pool=" parameter in FORM.DBD is missing or blank, the ATTACH command will not work. Read the Attached Cells General topic. Cap CAP calls the capacitance calculator. To measure capacitance: 1. You first must enter the capacitance units/physical area unit. This will usually be in pF/um2. 2. After you enter the capacitance per unit area, all paths with ANY active vertex will be measured automatically, and the total capacitance will be displayed. To compensate for corners, half the width is subtracted from each segment length. 3. After all paths are measured, all boxes with ANY active sides will be measured automatically, and the total capacitance of the paths and boxes will be displayed. 4. The command will then go into manual mode. Any polygons or areas in cells that should be included can then be manually measured. 5. When in manual mode, at the command prompt "[/]", you must fill the area to be measured with rectangular cursor areas by clicking the left mouse button at diagonally opposite corners of the areas. 6. An area's capacitance and the sum of previous capacitances will always be displayed at the bottom of the screen. 7. To end measuring, click the mouse on any menu button except a window command, or press ESC. Note: To automatically measure an area, it must be either a path or a box in the present cell. Areas that are visible but are part of a cell within the present cell must be still manually measured. This command may be used as an area parameter calculator. For example, you can calculate the area of an integrated circuit by setting the capacitance per area to 1. cCel CCEL changes any active cells into the specified cell. This command will not work in a rank 1 cell. Attempting to change to an unknown cell or a cell too high in rank will abort the command. Cancel CCEL by pressing ENTER only or ESC. Cell CELL exits Cell or System Mode and enters Cell Mode. To enter Cell Mode using the CELL command: A cellname must be provided. If you execute CELL in Cell Mode, the first active cell that is found in the drawing becomes the default cellname. If there is a default cellname, you will be transferred to that cell directly. If no cellname is found, you will be asked for one. If a cell is a new one, the rank will also be requested. To create a new cell you must use this command. If a mistake is made, or you want to go to System Mode press ENTER only or ESC to the cellname or rank question. Note: You can also get to a cell by selecting the cell from the cell list using the LIST command, or you can go directly to a cell by typing the cellname on the DOS command line after "lasi" when starting the program. cGet CGET (cell get) makes cells active. If the rectangular cursor window completely encloses the cell's area the cell will become active. or: If the mouse button is double clicked while making the cursor window, a cell will become active if the cells's area overlaps the cursor window. This does not work if the cell is drawn as an outline. An active cell turns bright white on all layers. An active cell drawn as an outline turns bright white and is filled with dots. There is no dependence on VIEW or OPEN. CGET only works on the top level of cells and has no effect on boxes or paths. Clrs CLRS enters into the Layer Attribute Display and allows the color of a layer to be set. The number of the layer is shown in the layer color. To exit, press ESC to the "Color Layer" question. Clyr CLYR changes the layer of boxes, paths or text. If the value entered is not 1 through 64, the layer will be reasked. The default layer is the layer currently set by the LAYR command. Boxes must have ALL sides active to change layer. Paths must have ANY vertex active to change layer. Text will change layer if active. Read LAYR. cMov CMOV (cell move) moves cells directly. A cell will be moved if the rectangular cursor window completely encloses the cell's area. or: If the mouse button is double clicked while making the cursor window, the cell will be moved if the cell's area overlaps the cursor window. This does not work if the cell is drawn only as an outline. The first two cursor points form the cursor window. The next two cursor points determine the distance to be moved. The move part of the command accepts a single PKE distance entry. CMOV only works on the top level of cells and has no effect on boxes and paths. Cntr CNTR centers the drawing window. The new center is a single point input from the mouse or a PKE coordinate entry. The display is redrawn. Read DRAW. Copy COPY allows NORMAL cells to be copied or appended to other NORMAL cells. Rules for COPYing: The source cell must be a NORMAL cell (not attached) in the drawing cell collection. If the destination cell has a NEW NAME, a new cell will be created. If the destination cell already exists, the source cell will be APPENDED to the existing cell. If either the source or destination cells are attached cells, the command will abort. Inter-rank copying is permitted. If the source cell contains cells that have rank equal to or greater than the destination cell, those cells will not be copied. Boxes, paths and text are always copied. Appended objects appear as active objects in the destination cell. This allows you to move the appended parts if they overlay any previous objects. When you first enter Cell Mode when doing this procedure, the status at the bottom will not indicate any active objects. Ignore it. If the source or destination cells are incorrect, or if copying will overflow the allocation in FORM of any objects, the copy operation will be cancelled and a message will be shown. Read the IMPORT Command Topic. cPut CPUT (cell put) makes cells inactive. This the inverse of CGET, and works the same way. Read APUT. Cpy CPY copies active objects. The displacement is determined by a 2-point cursor input. The original objects are made inactive and the copies are made active. Boxes are copied if ALL sides are active. Cells are copied if they are active. Vertices of paths are copied only if they are active. To copy a path completely it must be fully active. This feature allows you to copy sections of paths. Text is copied if it is active. CPY accepts a single PKE distance entry. Read STEP. Cut CUT breaks a path into two separate paths at an active vertex. This command works if there is ONLY ONE active vertex. The last vertex at the cut point of the newly created path is made active. Use this command to break paths into segments to create new constructions, and to make shorter paths and poly that will be more manageable for translation into other drawing systems. cWth CWTH changes the width of paths and the size of text. The default width is the width currently set by the WDTH command. Paths with ANY vertex active will change width. Text that is active will change its size to the new width. Read WDTH. Dash DASH enters into the Layer Attribute Display and allows the type of dash to be set for a layer. The pattern of the dash number is shown by the sample lines. The dash number of the layer is shown above the corresponding colored layer number. To exit, press ESC to the "Dash Layer" question. Del DEL deletes objects or parts of objects. An object's layer must be VIEWed and OPENed to be deleted. Boxes are deleted if ALL sides are active. Active vertices of paths are deleted. Text is deleted if it is active. Paths with one or no vertices on any layer are deleted. Cells that are active are deleted without regard to the layers that they contain and the status of the VIEW and OPEN commands. Important: Before any object is deleted, the hard disk files DSBKUP.BP4 and DSBKUP.CL4 are updated. If you make a mistake and delete the wrong thing, you can use the ABRT command to restore the drawing. dGrd DGRD sets the dot grid. The dot grid is in physical units. The dot grid may be any acceptable size and can be toggled on and off with the GRID command. If the grid is smaller than the resolution set by the SET command it will not be drawn. The present dot grid will be shown at the bottom of the screen. Read SET. DOS DOS temporally runs other programs from the DOS command line. At least 64K of memory must be available for this command to work. The DOS command from System Mode makes more memory available than the DOS command from Cell Mode because it deallocates drawing space. If you use too much memory you may get an "Not Available" message. Certain DOS command line operations may be done, like DIR for example. Certain small programs may be run if they can load into available memory. DO NOT run LASI utility programs from this command since the drawing information may not be current on the hard disk. Draw DRAW redraws the drawing window on the screen. Drawing of boxes, paths and text takes place in ascending layer order. Lesser cells are drawn starting at the lowest rank and are overlayed upward. The boxes, paths and text of the current cell always overlay all layers of any lesser cells. If during redraw a cell to be drawn exceeds the space allocation set with the Form File, a message will be printed and drawing will stop. Paths with widths near the unit grid limit may appear distorted. This is because all drawing points are set in the unit grid. If you try to draw a path or poly with a vertex count exceeding the limits of 250 and 500 respectively, the object may not draw or fill correctly, but drawing will fail gracefully. Paths may be drawn with or without a dashed center line. To toggle the center line on and off press the C key. A "C" displayed in the lower right of the screen indicates that center lines are ON. Read the Drawing Speed General topic for useful information. fGet FGET (full get) makes a box or path fully active. A box is made fully active if ANY side is made active as would be done using GET. A path is made fully active if ANY vertex is made active as would be done using GET. FGET is the same as GET for text. This command allows the entire box or path to be operated upon by any subsequent command if only a part is accessible. If you want to delete a box or path completely use this command first. Fill FILL enters into the Layer Attribute Display and allows the type of fill to be set for a layer. The pattern of the fill number is shown by the sample boxes. The fill number of the layer is shown above the corresponding colored layer number. Boxes, paths and closed polygons will be filled with the chosen fill pattern. The fill of all layers may be temporally turned off by answering "off" to the "Fill Layer" question. Calling FILL again will turn fill back on. To exit, press ESC to the "Fill Layer" question. Fit FIT sets the size of the drawing window so that it will show all of the objects in a cell. There is no dependence in VIEW or OPEN. The display is redrawn. If there are no objects present, fit will expand the drawing window to the maximum size permitted or the whole "universe". Read DRAW and the Universe General Topic. Flp FLP flips objects. Flipping in either X or Y determined by a 2-point cursor input. The larger dimension of the cursor input determines the flip axis. The cursor will show the approximate flip axis. Boxes flip if ALL sides are active. ALL vertices of a path flip if ANY vertex is active. Text will flip if active. Note: FLP and ROT do no commute. That is, the order in which these commands are used is important. Objects FLPed and ROTed in different orders are not the same. Read ROT. Form FORM displays the settings in the FORM.DBD file. The parameters and their variables are shown on the first page. The function key assignments are shown on the next two pages or until there are no more assignments. Press ESC or click the right mouse button to goto the next page. Read the Form File topic in General Information. fPut FPUT (full put) makes boxes and paths fully inactive. This is the inverse of FGET. A box is made fully inactive if ANY side is made inactive. A path is made fully inactive if ANY single vertex is made inactive. FPUT is the same as PUT for text. Use this command to make fully inactive a box or path when only a part of the box or path is displayed. Full FULL removes cells from being drawn as an outline. Cells are changed from being drawn as an outline if a cell's area is completely enclosed by the rectangular cursor window. Read OUTL. Get GET makes single parts of boxes and paths active. The layer must be VIEWed and OPENed. Box sides are made active if they pass anywhere within the rectangular cursor window. Path vertices are made active if they are within the cursor window. Text is made active if its reference point is in the cursor window. When made active: Box sides turn bright white. Vertices are marked and segments of paths that will move as a unit turn bright white. Text turns bright white. GET is the default command when LASI is started. Grid GRID toggles the dot grid on and off. The menu button intensifies to indicate that the grid is on. The dot grid will not be drawn if the spacing is less that the drawing resolution set using the SET command. Read SET and DGRD. Hcpy HCPY expands the screen and calls a hardcopy program that makes a bitmap copy of the screen on a printer or to a file. When HCPY is called the screen will redraw to full size. The system will wait for a key to be pressed: Press ENTER if you want to add the name, date and time to the screen and start a hardcopy. Press CTRL-ENTER if you want to make a hardcopy of the screen without the name, date and time. Press ESC anytime if you want to abort hardcopying. Note: At least 64K of remaining memory is necessary to run a hardcopy program. If there isn't, the hardcopy will not execute and you will return to LASI Cell Mode. Read the Hardcopy General topic. Iden IDEN identifies an active object. Objects are taken in the order: box/path/cell. Only the first active object found is reported. For a box the layer is shown. For a path the layer and the width are shown. For text the layer and size are shown. For a cell the name, position and orientation are shown. No active object gives a parts count of the current cell. Read SHOW. Import IMPORT allows ATTACHED cells to be brought into a drawing as NORMAL cells. Rules for IMPORTing: The source must be an ATTACHED cell in the drawing cell collection. If the destination cell has the SAME NAME as the source cell, the cell becomes a NORMAL cell and replaces all occurrences of its use in all other cells. If the destination cell has a NEW NAME, a NEW NORMAL cell will be created with the new name. The destination will always become a rank 1 cell. If the source cell is not attached, the destination cell is already present or is an attached cell with a different name, the command will be aborted. Cells never export back to the pool. If imported to the SAME NAME, a BP4 file will be copied from the pool to the drawing directory. You would use this procedure if you want to replace all occurrences of an attached cell in other cells with a normal cell that may be modified. You can then RENAM the normalized cell, and ATTACH the original cell again to make other modified versions. If the destination has a NEW NAME, a new normal cell will be created and the attached cell will remain unaffected. You can then modify the new cell and use it where desired. Notice that the difference between these two procedures is that in the first procedure the attached cell is replaced automatically wherever it is used. In the second procedure you generate an independent cell and you must replace any occurrences of the attached cell individually. If the source or destination cells are incorrect, or if importing will overflow the allocation in FORM of any objects, the import operation will be cancelled and a message will be shown. Read the COPY Command topic. Join JOIN connects two paths head to tail to form a new single path. Rules for JOINing: This command works only if there are exactly two active vertices which are the end and beginning of a path. If the active vertices are beginning and end of the same path and the path is not already closed, a segment will be added to close the path and both vertices will be made inactive. If the active vertices are beginning and end of different paths and the vertices are at the same location, the paths will be merged into a single path, one vertex will be deleted, and one vertex will remain active. If the active vertices are beginning and end of different paths and the vertices are at different locations, a segment will be added, the paths will be merged into a single path, and both vertices will remain active. Use this command to condense paths to reduce data, and to make closed poly constructions out of poly segments. Kill KILL removes a cell from the drawing Cells are removed from the drawing's cell collection. KILLed cells are removed from any other cells. The cell internal files at the DOS system level are erased. Important: It is recommended that you keep an archive of your cells using the TLC.EXE utility program. This is the only way that you can recover a cell that has been accidentally KILLed. Layr LAYR sets the layer of boxes, paths or text to be ADDed. If the value entered is not 1 through 64, the layer will be reasked. Read CLYR. List LIST lists the cells in the cell collection. This command appears in both System and Cell Modes. The mouse will also be active and the cursor can be positioned on the name of any of the cells listed. If the left mouse button is clicked on the cellname, Cell Mode will be entered for that cell. If the left mouse button is clicked in a location that will not select a cell, it will be ignored. Pressing ESC or clicking the right mouse button will step to the next page or will exit to the present mode. Attached cell names appear in red in the cell list. The list of cells has a history feature. The number that appears in front of a cellname indicates the inverse order in which the cells were last opened. That is, number 1 is the last cell you worked on, number 2 the second to last, and so on. This allows you to go through a sequence of deeply nested cells, and then randomly return to a higher ranked cell. Rules for cell history: If a cell is opened again, previous events for that cell are purged from the history. An asterisk indicates the current cell. Hint: LIST is the fastest way to change from cell to cell because you don't have to type or even precisely remember a cellname. Make MAKE makes a new cell from the active cells, boxes, paths and text. Rules for MAKE: Boxes, paths and text are copied if ANY part is active. The rank of the new cell will be one higher than the highest rank of any active cells. The name must not already be in the cell collection. If it is, the prompt will be reasked. No name at all or ESC will cancel MAKE. When MAKE makes a new cell it first determines the area or outline of the current cell on which you are working. It then uses this area as the area of the new cell. It also uses the current origin as the origin of the new cell. Normally, you will enter into Cell Mode with the new cell and reposition the origin with the ORIG command. When Cell Mode is then exited the correct area will be recalculated. Hint: When MAKE is used to create a new cell, its name is at the end of the cell list. Use LIST to go to the new cell to make any changes. MAKE can be used to copy portions of one cell to another cell. First make a temporary cell and then go to System Mode and COPY the temporary cell to the destination cell. When you enter the destination cell the you will find the temporary cell appended to it. You can then KILL the temporary cell. Mov MOV moves the active sides of boxes, active vertices, and active cells. The distance is determined from a 2-point cursor input. The cursor will show the approximate move. MOVs are always done in multiples of the working grid, unless you press the A or ALT keys to switch to the unit grid. MOV accepts a single PKE distance entry. Read WMOV, QMOV and CMOV. Obj OBJ sets the name or type of object to be added. Responding with "b" will make boxes and "p" will make paths. For adding a cell give the name of the cell. Note: Boxes, paths and cells are treated equally as far as adding is concerned. However, boxes, paths and text are "basic" objects while cells are compound objects. Generally, there are different commands for these different types of objects. Octo OCTO is a toggle that changes octagonal cursor mode on certain commands. The menu button intensifies to indicate that octagonal mode is on. When octagonal mode is on, the cursor displacement is snapped to the nearest 45 degrees. The commands ADD (for paths), MOV, WMOV, QMOV, CMOV and CPY are affected. This command is used to restrict drawing so that only 45 and 90 degree angles are allowed, which preserves drawing neatness and conforms to certain physical artwork generation requirements. Open OPEN sets the layers that can have their boxes, paths and text made active. Boxes, paths and text that are not OPENed are blocked from the GET, FGET, WMOV, QMOV, PBEG and PEND commands. Cell commands like CGET, CPUT or CMOV are not affected. VIEW and OPEN accept layer inputs that can be single layers in any order, or a dash (-) can be used to indicate all inclusive layers between the end layers. A dash alone will give all layers from 1 to 64. Orig ORIG relocates the coordinates of all objects in a drawing so that the single cursor input point is the 0,0 position. This command allows objects to be constructed almost anywhere on the drawing window and then be repositioned as desired. The working grid is the default grid, but may be changed to the unit grid with the A or ALT keys. Set you cell origin as soon as you make a cell, or you may have to relocate the cell each time it is used in higher ranking cells. Outl OUTL sets cells to draw as an outline. Cells are changed to outlines if a cell's area is completely enclosed by the rectangular cursor window. or: If the mouse is double clicked while making the cursor window, cells will be changed if the cell's area overlaps the cursor window. An outlined cell will be drawn as a white rectangle with the name of the cell in text in the lower left corner. An active cell in outline will be drawn as a bright white rectangle filled with dots. The cell's name can be toggled on and off by pressing the N key. An "N" displayed in the lower right of the screen indicates that names are ON. You can greatly speed up an overall redraw by setting the cells in an region where you are not currently working to outline. When a cell is set to outline, retrieval of the cell's files from a disk is unnecessary and drawing the internal parts of a cell is skipped. Read FULL. OvSz OVSZ expands the sides of boxes, paths and closed poly by a certain distance. Rules for OVSZing: A negative distance shrinks the sides. Only active box sides are oversized. All sides of paths or closed polygons are oversized if any vertex is active. The oversizing algorithm used must identify a polygon as having a rotational angle of +/-360 deg. If this cannot be done, the poly will be unchanged. If a poly contains adjacent sides that are folded back 180 deg on each other, the results will be undefined since the direction of folding cannot be identified. Note: Acute angles on closed poly are not oversized correctly. You need to insert an additional vertex at an acute angle to prevent the peak of an acute angle from extending beyond the oversize distance. Read PSIZ. pBeg PBEG makes the first vertex of a path active. This command works if ANY vertex of a path falls within the rectangular cursor window. PBEG is useful when the JOIN command is being used. Read PEND. pEnd PEND makes the last vertex of a path active. This command works if ANY vertex of a path falls within the rectangular cursor window. This command is useful both to find the end of a path and to reopen a closed path. Read PBEG. Plot PLOT calls the plotting program. A plot will be made of the last cell as it was shown in the drawing window. The drawing window center and width and the cellname are passed to the plotting program. The plotting program is named in the FORM "plot=" parameter. Presently, the only plotting program is LASI2HP.EXE. It is possible that you will not have enough contiguous memory available to run a plot program from LASI. If this happens, the program will not execute and you will return to LASI. To remedy this situation, either add more RAM, if possible, remove any unnecessary resident programs (TSRs) or reduce the amount of memory used by LASI in the "box=", "path=", "vtx=" and "cell=" FORM parameters. If this fails, run the plotting program by itself. Read the HPGL Conversion help category for how to do this. pRev PREV reverses the order of the vertices in a path. A path must have at least one active vertex. ALL paths that have any active vertex will be reversed. Reversing the order allows vertices to be added to either the beginning or end of a path. It also allows paths to be JOINed properly. pSiz PSIZ changes the size of a path while still preserving its shape. The multiplier is 1 for no change, and can be any number that will not cause the path to overflow the drawing area. The geometric center of the path is kept constant. If a small path is resized or if it is made too small, it may change shape due to the limited resolution of the unit grid. PSIZ acts on paths that have ANY vertex active. Use PSIZ to make different sizes of complex polygon figures such as symbols or lettering. Read OVSZ. Put PUT makes single parts of boxes and paths inactive. This is the inverse of GET and works the same way. Read FPUT and APUT. qMov QMOV (quick move) functions like the sequence GET, MOV, PUT. This command works on box sides that pass through the cursor window, and on vertices or text reference points that are enclosed by the cursor window. Box and path layers must be VIEWed and OPENed. The move part of this command accepts a single PKE distance entry. QMOV is useful for making small vertex movements and small box side movements when the path or box is only partly accessible. Read WMOV. Quit QUIT exits from the LASI drawing system to DOS. All current information about the drawing is saved on the hard disk in the drawing directory. The condition of DOS when LASI was entered is restored. The drawing may be reentered by running LASI.EXE again. However, the cells that may have been stored on a RAM disk will be unknown to LASI and will have to be relearned by drawing them once. ReNam RENAM changes the name of a cell. Cellnames must conform to DOS filename rules. This command will not work if the new name is the name of a cell that already exists in the cell collection or is a reserved name such as "b" or "p". To give a cell another cell's name in a cell collection, you must first RENAM or KILL the original cell and then RENAM the cell. Res RES calls the resistance calculator. To measure resistance: 1. You first must enter the sheet resistance in resistance units/square. This will usually be ohms/square. 2. You will next be asked for the End Compensation. This is the number of squares to be added or subtracted to compensate for any effects of resistor heads. This depends on how you draw your resistors and can be a fractional number. 3. After you enter the sheet resistance, if a path with ANY active vertex is found, the path will be automatically traced from beginning to end and the total resistance will be displayed. To compensate for corners, half the width is always subtracted from each segment length. 4. After a SINGLE path is measured the command will enter manual mode. 5. If no path has been found, you will have to manually enter the resistor width, otherwise, the path width is taken as the resistor width. 6. In manual mode, at the "<-->" command prompt, the width of the resistor must be measured by a 2-point cursor input or a single PKE distance entry. 7. At the command prompt "R-->", you can then calculate resistance by making 2-point cursor distance measurements along the length of a resistor. The distance will be displayed by a dashed line, and the incremental resistance and the total resistance will be displayed at the bottom of the screen. 8. To end measuring, click the mouse on any menu button except a window command, or press ESC. Note: To automatically measure a path, it must be a path in the present cell. Paths that are visible but are part of a cell within the present cell must still be manually measured. This command can be used as a ratio parameter calculator. For example, to measure a MOS gate size, set the sheet resistance to 1. Measure the gate width as the resistor width and the gate length as the resistor length. rDrw RDRW is the same as DRAW except that layers are drawn in reverse descending order. The drawing order rules for lesser cells of DRAW apply to RDRW. This command is useful if you want to overlay fills so that objects that would normally be covered by objects on higher layers remain visible. Read DRAW. Rot ROT rotates objects. Rotation is around a single cursor input point. Boxes, text and cells rotate +/-90, 180 deg. Paths rotate through any angle. Boxes rotate if ALL sides are active. ALL vertices of a path rotate if ANY vertex is active. Text and cells rotate if they are active. Note: Sometimes a rotated path may not be exactly identical to an original if it has been rotated and then rotated back. This is caused by rounding coordinates to the unit grid each time a rotation takes place. Read FLP. Rstr RSTR restores a drawing window. RSTR does not accept keyboard entries in the usual way, that is, terminated by ENTER. It requires only a number key to be pressed. Only the keys 0-9 will execute the command, otherwise the window number will be reasked. Window 0 is always the previous window. Windows 1-9 should have been saved using the SAVE command. The restored drawing window is immediately redrawn. Press ESC to abort RSTR. Note: RSTR has a LAST WINDOW FEATURE. Whenever a window is changed, the previous window remembered. Reclicking the right mouse button will cause the original window to be restored. Save SAVE saves a drawing window. The windows are numbered 1-9. SAVE does not accept keyboard entries in the usual way, that is, terminated by ENTER. It requires only a number key to be pressed. Only the keys 1-9 are acceptable window numbers, otherwise, the window number will be reasked. Press ESC to abort SAVE. The windows saved are global, that is they are independent of the Cell Mode rank that you are in. The windows are stored in the CONSTS4.DBD file when you quit LASI, and are returned when you rerun the program. Scale SCALE is used to set the name of the physical scale units of the drawing and the number of basic units per physical unit. Rules for setting scales: The scale units name can be anything, but for integrated circuits "um" and "mil" are preferred because some utility programs use these units. Only the first 5 characters will be accepted for the scale name. The number of basic units per physical unit will usually be an integer greater than 1, but fractional scales are permitted. The scale that is set by this command really only relates the basic units in which a drawing is internally done to the inputs that you give to certain questions and to dimensions that you see externally. All inputs and outputs are converted by the scale to and from basic units. When setting up a scale, you should determine the maximum size that your drawing could be and then set your scale so that the maximum number of basic units (65536) is slightly larger than that size. For example, a typical integrated circuit will fit in 16 mm, which would result from using a scale of 4 basic units/micron, or .25um drawing resolution. Set SET allows you to change certain parameters and the actions of certain commands. Presently 5 parameters can be set: 1. SET sets the resolution of the drawing in (screen width/size of figure) units. Boxes are not drawn if both dimensions are less than the resolution. Paths or poly are not drawn if the distance from the minimum vertex to the maximum vertex in both dimensions is less than the resolution. Paths are drawn as lines if their width is less than the resolution. Text is not drawn if its size (height) is less than the resolution. The dot grid is not draw if its spacing is less than the resolution. Normally, resolution of 200 is about right. 2. The text spacing ratio can be set. This is the fraction of the size of text characters with which the characters are spaced. The value is clamped between .5 and 2. 3. The number of "ticks" that determine the mouse button double click interval can be set. The number is an integer and is clamped between 0 and 32767. 4. The Auto Sort Time, the time before an automatic SORT and backup takes place can be set. The time can be from 1 to 32767 minutes. 5. The number of working grids that you intend to use can be set so that you won't have to step through extra working grids with the WGRD command. 6. The size of the working grids in physical units can be set. You must enter all the grids, but pressing ENTER or ESC keeps the default value in the parentheses. Press ESC to exit SET anywhere in the sequence. Show SHOW gives information about an object. In System Mode, SHOW gives the following information about a cell: The cell's rank, number in the cell collection and if it is attached. The cell's outline boundaries as found in the cell list. The number of cells, boxes, paths and vertices in the cell. A listing of the named cell's lesser cells. The number of boxes and paths (text) on the layers. In Cell Mode, SHOW gives information on the first active object that it finds in the order. box/path/cell: For a box the positions of the sides and the layer are shown. For a path the vertex positions, the layer, the width and an active vertex mark "*" are shown. For text the reference point, the layer, the size and the characters will be shown. For a cell the information is similar to the System Mode SHOW, but also includes the position and orientation of the cell. No active object gives a parts count of the current cell. Press ESC or click the right mouse button to continue or exit from SHOW. Smsh SMSH smashes any active cells, text or boxes into their component objects and adds them to the current cell. The original active objects are deleted. Rules for SMSHing:: Cells are smashed down one rank at a time. You may have to do multiple smashes if you want to reduce higher rank cells all the way to boxes, paths and text. Text is smashed into poly objects that replace the original text. These poly are the same as any other poly, and may be rotated to any angle or given width to make paths. Smashing text can increase the number of paths and vertices considerably if you are not careful. Boxes must have all sides active. A box will be replaced by a five vertex polygon with the same dimensions. Note: If you try to SMSH any object that will cause any of your object limits set in FORM.DBD to be exceeded, the object will not be smashed but will remain intact and active. You will get a message for each object component that cannot be added. If you are smashing text or boxes you may get a partial poly conversion, but the original object will remain. Important: Before any object is smashed, the hard disk files DSBKUP.BP4 and DSBKUP.CL4 are updated. If you make a mistake and smash the wrong thing, you can use the ABRT command to restore the drawing. Sort SORT cleans, sorts and stores a backup of the drawing. Boxes which have two or more sides superimposed are deleted. Sequential vertices with the same coordinates are deleted. Paths with one or no vertices are deleted. Any cells that may for some reason have rank greater or equal to the current cell will be deleted. Boxes, paths and text are sorted in ascending order of their layers and their Y-position. Cells are sorted according to their Y-position and their order in the CELLS4.DBD file. BP4 and CL4 files of the current cell are updated on the hard disk. The backup files SORTBKUP.BP4 and SORTBKUP.CL4 are updated on the hard disk. These may be used to restore the cell if the ABRT command is used. This allows you to "undo" what was done since the last SORT. You may stop a long sort by pressing the SPACE bar. Eventually, when objects are in good order, sorting will be fast. Note: The SORT command will be executed automatically if you do not click either mouse button before the Auto Sort Time times out. This feature protects your drawing if you leave it unattended. Hint: Sorting should be done periodically while working on a drawing. This not only cleans any defective objects, but also improves drawing speed by ordering the cells. Step STEP steps active objects into an Nx by Ny two-dimensional array. Stepping distances in X and Y are determined by a 2-point cursor input. This may also be entered as a single PKE distance entry. The original active objects are copied repeatedly just as though the CPY command was used. The final copied objects remain active, while all previous copies become inactive. Stepping can be ended by pressing the SPACE bar. Note: Care should be used with this command because you can easily fill up your cell's object capacity if you don't watch your numbers. If this happens press SPACE to end stepping. Sys SYS exits directly from Cell Mode to System Mode. All active objects are made inactive. The current cell is saved on the hard disk in the drawing directory. Note: Any cells that may have been put on a RAM disk remain known to LASI when you go to System Mode. You lose these only when you QUIT. Text TEXT generates a text object. To generate text you must input the following: 1. The reference point, a single cursor input point, which is the lower left corner of the character field where the first text character is to be placed. 2. The text character string of up to 40 characters terminated by ENTER. The string of text should appear in the drawing made from polygons. The layer and size of the characters will be taken from the current LAYR and WDTH settings. The CLYR and CWTH commands may be used to change the text layer and size. Text Properties: Text is always left justified and appears on a single line. There is no text editor, so you must delete and rewrite any text. You can make the text active using the GET or FGET commands. You may copy, rotate, flip and move the text using the CPY, ROT, FLP and the several types of move commands. Text size will always be in integral multiples of 15 basic units. This is to prevent distortion of the characters. A text object is seen by LASI as a single point, the reference point. To operate on a text object, the reference point must fall within any cursor window. The T key toggles the reference point between visible (a small diamond, same color as text) and invisible. A "T" displayed in the lower right of the screen indicates that reference points are visible. Hint: To make text characters that are to appear permanently on any IC masks, first make text of the appropriate size and then SMSH the text. Since any characters must have a width that will reproduce on the masks, you will first have to give the smashed poly some width with the CWTH command, and then modify the paths using the MOV, CUT, JOIN, etc. commands to make the characters look better. Read the Text Generation help category for more information. TLC-In TLC-Out TLC-IN and TLC-OUT are commands that call the TLC.EXE program which converts internal cell data TO and FROM transportable (TLC) format. "In" means convert TLC files FROM some source TO internal form in your present drawing. "Out" means convert FROM internal form in your present drawing TO some destination in TLC format. Normally TLC files are put on a floppy disk. This lets you keep your drawing on floppy disk, and then load and save that drawing or individual cells as needed. It is also recommended that you keep drawing backups this way. With either command, the default source or destination disk drive is the floppy drive that is in the "fdisk=" parameter in the FORM.DBD file. Any acceptable drive or path may be entered in place of that drive. If you want to refer to TLC files in the current drawing directory enter a period "." to the drive question. You may specify up to 10 Cell Names separated by spaces. TLC-OUT without any Cell Name(s) dumps to the destination disk ALL drawing cells as TLC files along with the CELLS.REF file. TLC-IN without any Cell Name(s) retrieves ALL cells by reading the CELLS.REF file on the Source disk and translating TLC files into internal file form (BP4 & CL4 files). These commands have considerable power since you can also specify the name of any system disk device as the source or destination. You can also give a path as part the disk specification, so that cell files can be TAKEN FROM or SENT TO other directories other than your drawing directory. Unless you are familiar with the use of DOS paths and remember just where you put things, you can get into trouble this way by mixing up the cells in different drawings. Note: These commands really only run TLC.EXE as a child process from LASI.EXE. It is possible that you might run out of memory, and the program will return a "Not Available" or other error message. If this happens, you must run TLC.EXE alone in memory. Read the TLC Conversion help category for instructions on running TLC.EXE. View VIEW sets the layers that will be drawn on the display. Boxes, paths and text that are not VIEWed are blocked from the GET, FGET, WMOV, QMOV, PBEG and PEND commands. Any active boxes or vertices will be drawn as bright white line segments or as bright white vertex marks regardless of the VIEW setting. This allows you to see where any active object are located, which still will be affected by MOV, CPY, ROT, FLP or DEL commands. VIEW and OPEN accept layer inputs that can be single layers in any order, or a dash (-) can be used to indicate all inclusive layers between the end layers. A dash alone will give all layers from 1 to 64. Read OPEN. Wdth WDTH sets the width of paths and the size of text to be ADDed. The present range of acceptable widths is 2 to 1024 basic units. If a pathwidth is entered that is unacceptable, then the prompt will be repeated with the value in the default parentheses. A width of 0 is also acceptable. This produces paths of zero width or polygons (poly) or text of minimum size. A positive width causes the end of a path to be flush with its coordinate. A negative width produces a path whose end extends half the width beyond the coordinate. This is for CALMA compatibility. Use of negative widths is generally discouraged. Read CWTH. wGet WGET (window get) is a combination of GET and CGET. Cells, boxes, paths and text are affected the same way as those commands. WGET is useful if you want to activate a number of objects of different types to do some operation on all of them simultaneously. WGET is useful if you are MOVing large sections of a drawing because you can see just which object are active before the operation. WGET makes active single sides of boxes and single vertices of paths, which are then pulled with active cells when MOVing is done. Read AGET. wGrd WGRD steps through the list of working grids. The working grids should have been entered using the SET command. The present working grid will be shown at the bottom of the screen. WGRD when assigned to a function key accepts a numerical argument. For example, a parameter in the FORM.DBD file "fkey=wgrd,10" assigns a function key so that when the key is pressed the working grid is set to 10 physical units. However, if "fkey=wgrd" is the parameter, you will be prompted for a working grid to be set. Read SET and the Form File General topic. wMov WMOV (window move) moves boxes, paths and cells. The sides of boxes or vertices of paths are moved if they are enclosed within the rectangular cursor window. Cells are also moved, but only if the cursor window completely encloses the cell's area. The cell may be drawn fully or be in outline. The first two cursor points form the cursor window. The next two cursor points determine the distance to be moved. A box side must be completely enclosed by the cursor window. Box and path layers must be VIEWed and OPENed. The move part of this command accepts a single PKE distance entry. WMOV is useful for stretching large sections of drawings orthogonally, for selectively doing box side movements and for quickly doing small vertex movements. Xpnd XPND expands the width of the drawing window. The new window width is multiplied by 2. The display is redrawn. Continuously XPNDing will eventually cause the window to expand to the maximum size permitted or the whole "universe". Read DRAW and the Universe General topic. Zoom ZOOM reduces the drawing window size. The new drawing window will be the best fit of the rectangular cursor window. The display is redrawn with the new drawing window. ZOOM works over a 1000:1 range. Hint: To ZOOM to a minimum window at a certain position, click the mouse on that same position twice. This will zoom to the default minimum window size centered at the cursor position. Read DRAW. TLC Conversion Introduction TLC (Transportable LASI Cells) is a form of LASI cell data that is used for drawing cell data storage and interchange. TLC files are ASCII sequential files written in a well documented form. TLC files are easily readable by programming languages including BASIC and C. TLC is convenient for writing special programs to be used with LASI such as drawing transformation utilities or translators from other drawing systems. (TILT.EXE and CSF2TLC.EXE are examples.) Each TLC file contains the information needed to construct a single cell. The file contains information on the boxes, paths, text and cells in a cell. It does not contain information on how to make any cells that may be used within a cell. To build a complete drawing you need a COMPLETE set of TLC files. By way of definition, cell files in TLC are called EXTERNAL files, while cell files used by LASI directly (BP4 and CL4) are called INTERNAL files. TLC files have the extension .TLC in DOS. Internal files are designed for the computers convenience, while external files are designed for human convenience. Using TLC is the ONLY WAY that cells can be installed in a LASI drawing from an external source. This is because the internal files use a pointer system of referring to a cell to save memory space. This pointer is the position in the CELLS4.DBD file of a cell's information, which cannot be changed without changing all cell references. The program TLC.EXE takes referencing into account and adjusts accordingly. Since each cell has its own TLC file, and a TLC file may not really contain all the information to construct a cell if it has lesser cells within it, the TLC files for the lesser cells will have to be present for conversion to internal form. When converting to external form, the TLC.EXE program is smart enough to make the TLC files of any lesser cells automatically. When conversion from external to internal is being done, the lesser cells will also be made in internal form if they are not already present in the drawing cell collection. You may optionally also replace any cells that are already there with new ones. Conversion Errors It is possible that files may be missing, incorrect or there may not be enough memory when converting. TLC.EXE will try to construct a drawing as best as possible by making a FALSE CELL. A false cell is a cell containing only the name of the cell enclosed in double angle brackets in text on layer 64. The rank of a false cell will always be 1, so that it will always appear in other cells. If a false cell is made, TLC will indicate the error, and continue as well as it can. Since it has rank 1, the false cell will contain no other cells. However, if the error is corrected, and TLC is used to overwrite the false cell, normal cell nesting will be constructed. The false cell may be thought of as a token or placeholder for the missing cell where it is used in other cells. TLC will always try to replace the token cell with the actual cell in the drawing cell collection once the correct information is available to make the actual cell. Pooled Cells When converting internal files to TLC files, TLC.EXE will look for an ATTACHED cell that may be used in a drawing in the POOL directory as listed in the FORM.DBD file. If it doesn't find it, it will produce a token TLC file consisting of the name of the cell in text. It will not look for an attached cell in the drawing directory. When converting from TLC form, TLC.EXE will put ALL cells in the DRAWING directory since it has no knowledge (nor should it) of any cells that may have come from a pool. Keep this in mind if you are converting into a drawing. Conversion Options The TLC.EXE program has 4 Conversion Options, two for conversion TO TLC and two FROM TLC: 1. Convert ALL Cells to TLC: ALL Cells are converted from the source to the destination. This is the standard drawing dump to TLC form. 2. Convert NAMED Cells to TLC: NAMED cells are converted to TLC from the source to the destination. Cells that are needed to construct a cell of greater rank are also converted as an option. 3. Convert ALL Cells from TLC: This requires that the CELLS.REF file exist at the source. The names of all the cells at the source are simply read from the CELLS.REF file in that location and are converted as if they had been named individually in Option 4. If the CELLS.REF file is missing at the source then Option 4 only may be used. 4. Convert NAMED Cells from TLC: NAMED cells are converted to internal files. The CELLS4.DBD file at the destination is augmented with the NAMED cell. If lesser cells are needed they are also converted from the source TLC into internal files at the destination. If the cells are not present at the destination they will be converted automatically. If the lesser cells are present at the destination you will have the option to replace them with new ones. Therefore, to fully reconstruct a cell from TLC, all lesser cells must be present either in the source or destination cell collections in TLC or internal form. When converting back from TLC form, the TLC program knows if a cell is in the destination by reading the CELLS4.DBD file. TLC will replace the named cell but will OPTIONALLY replace lesser cells, the cells within the named cell. If any cells do not exist in the drawing cell collection they will be made. If the CELLS4.DBD file is not present at the destination, then one is made. To convert a complete layout drawing from TLC, you start with a blank directory, and name the main drawing cell to be converted (or use Option 3). The TLC program then reconstructs the whole drawing by making all lesser cells first, and then the named main cell. In all options the CONSTS4.DBD file of the source or destination directory is left unaffected. If a drawing is reconstructed from TLC, you must load your favorite CONSTS4.DBD file, or let LASI provide a default one when it starts up. Running TLC.EXE When running TLC.EXE you pass parameters as arguments on the DOS command line. Arguments are separated by one or more spaces. The FIRST parameter is the CONVERSION DIRECTION consisting of the brace characters "{" or "}". The direction is indicated by how the brace points at "tlc". For example, "tlc } etc." converts FROM TLC form. The SECOND is the SOURCE path, the disk name or "." for the current directory. The THIRD is the DESTINATION path, the disk name or "." for the current directory. The NEXT parameters are needed only if options 2 or 4 are be used, and are a list of up to 10 NAMES of cells to be converted according to that option. Hint: Run the TLC.EXE program without any arguments to get HELP. Important: The FORM.DBD file must always be present in the directory where the internal (BP4 and CL4) files exist or are to be generated. TLC.EXE needs this information to allocate space. Things to remember when converting: The first THREE parameters MUST be present to be counted correctly. For options 1 and 3 the file CELLS4.DBD or CELLS.REF must be in the source directory. If there are no NAME parameters, options 1 and 3 are assumed and performed according the direction of the brace character. The CELLS.REF File As TLC makes it, the CELLS.REF file is a copy of CELLS4.DBD. You may change the CELLS.REF file to convert modified lists of cells into Internal form. To remove a cell, delete the cell's name and the data line that follows it in the CELLS.REF file. To add a cell, insert the cell's name on a single line and then the cell's rank on the next line. You don't need any additional data on the second line. The entry on the first line of the CELLS.REF file is the number of cells in the file. If you add or delete cells, you should adjust this number. When TLC converts to Internal form using CELLS.REF, it counts either to the number of cells it reads on the first line or to the end of the file, whichever comes first. Do all this with a text editor that produces standard DOS text files. TLC Format Cell files in TLC have a record structure. There are presently five kinds of records: Header, Cell, Box, Path and Text. The records for the objects in the cell are preceded by an "equals code" consisting of two characters: the first being "=" and the second being "H", "C", "B", "P" an "T" for Header, Cell, Box, Path or Text respectively. The TLC program then looks for the type of object to be made and acts accordingly. If at some time in the future, other objects are added to LASI, similar code will be used. If a data error is encountered during translation, it is possible that one or two objects may be incorrectly reconstructed from TLC. The equals code will try to resynchronize the data and correct translation will then resume. The Header record contains an object count and this is compared to the actual number of objects made, and miscounts are indicated by the TLC program. All records, including the Header, may be written in any order in a TLC file. Records in Detail Header Record: <nl>= carriage return + linefeed <sp>= space 1= "=H" (literal)<nl> 2= Name of Cell (DOS file name)<nl> 3= Version of LASI (literal)<nl> 4= Version of TLC (literal)<nl> 5= Basic Units per Physical Unit<nl> 6= Name of Physical Unit (literal)<nl> 7= Date of Cell Conversion (literal)<nl> 8= Time of Cell Conversion (literal)<nl> 9= Rank of Cell<sp> 10= Left Outline Boundary in basic units<sp> 11= Bottom Boundary in basic units<sp> 12= Right Boundary in basic units<sp> 13= Top Boundary in basic units<nl> 14= Number of Boxes<sp> 15= Number of Paths<sp> 16= Number of Vertices<sp> 17= Number of Cells<nl> Note: Versions must begin with a numeric character Cell Record Entries: 1= "=C" (literal)<nl> 2= Name of Lesser Cell<nl> 3= Orientation (see below)<sp> 4= X Position in basic units<sp> 5= Y Position in basic units<sp> 6= reserved (presently zero)<nl> Property Number: (0-15) 16 bit integer, all bits 0 except: Bit 4, 0= draw cell fully 1= draw cell outline Orientation: Bit 3, 0= cell not flipped 1= cell is flipped in X before rotation Bits 2 and 1, 0,0 = no rotation 0,1 = 90 deg rotation CCW 1,0 = 180 deg rotation CCW 1,1 = 270 deg rotation CCW Box Record Entries: 1= "=B" (literal)<nl> 2= Layer of Box<sp> 3= X of Lower Left Corner in basic units<sp> 4= Y of Lower Left Corner in basic units<sp> 5= X of Upper Right Corner in basic units<sp> 6= Y of Upper Right Corner in basic units<nl> Path/Poly Record Entries: 1= "=P" (literal)<nl> 2= Layer of Path/Poly<sp> 3= Width in basic units<sp> 4= No. of Vertices in path/poly<nl> 5= Vertices in basic units in the form: X1<sp>Y1<sp>X2<sp>Y2<sp>X3<sp>Y3<sp>X4<sp>Y4<sp>X5<sp>Y5<nl> .......Xn-1<sp>Yn-1<sp>Xn<sp>Yn<nl> (Groups of 5 coordinates separated by <sp> ended by <nl>, always with <nl> after Last Coordinate Pair) Text Record Entries: 1= "=T" (literal)<nl> 2= Layer of Text<sp> 3= Size in basic units<sp> 4= No. of Vertices used by text (includes Ref Point)<sp> 5= Orientation 0-7 (same as cells)<nl> 6= X Ref Point in basic units<sp> 7= Y Ref Point in basic units<nl> 8= ASCII character text string<nl> (u/l case, up to 32 characters) CSF Conversion Introduction LASI drawings are not very useful if they cannot be transformed into the more commonly used CAD system formats. The most common is GDSII CALMA Stream Format. Although CALMA drawing systems for ICs have become somewhat obsolete, the data format survives, and newer CAD systems such as CADENCE or MENTOR can usually convert it. LASI can be converted to CALMA Stream Format (CSF) exactly, and from CSF with some limitations. LASI has a drawing structure that is very similar to the CALMA drawing system, with the exception that LASI has box objects and is more limited in its data capacity and cell nesting depth. In LASI, cells are similar to CALMA structures, except that a definite rank is given to a cell. In LASI there are no CALMA boundary figures, instead there are zero width paths called poly. LASI drawings transform easily into CALMA because a box can be made into a boundary, a poly can become a boundary also, a path can transform directly into a path, and cells can easily become structures, partly due to their ranked orderly nesting. Since LASI drawings are more or less a subset of CALMA, conversion to CALMA is easy. More difficult is conversion from CALMA to LASI because there are things in CALMA (like arrays) that don't exist in LASI (yet). Conversion is possible in most cases if certain restrictions are used in the original CALMA drawing (such as limiting the structure nesting or using only small arrays). Conversion Programs The LASI2CSF.EXE program converts a LASI drawing into a binary file which is in CALMA Stream Format (CSF). This format is used as the standard for preserving and interchanging CALMA drawings. The file generated by LASI2CSF.EXE may be sent directly to a CALMA, may be put onto magtape if sent to some larger computer that has magtape capability, or may be put on a floppy disk (in DOS format) for reading by work stations with that capability. The CSF2TLC.EXE program will read back a CSF file and will construct a LASI drawing in TLC form as best as possible. A drawing first done on LASI will reconstruct exactly if returned from a CALMA without having been modified in some non-compatible way. Drawings made originally on CALMA may occasionally convert differently, since LASI presently doesn't have such things as datatypes, texttypes, arrays or layer 0. CSF2TLC produces TLC files for good reason. There can be essentially an infinite number of TLC files, so that a CSF file with almost any number of structures can be converted to TLC files. The TLC files can then be selectively converted into LASI drawings if necessary due to any LASI object allocation limitations. Note that CALMA Stream Files used by LASI2CSF.EXE and CSF2TLC.EXE have the extension ".CSF". This is a convention that not always standard. You may have to rename you file extensions. Running LASI2CSF.EXE 1. LASI2CSF.EXE must be present in the \LASI4 directory with a "PATH" opened to it by execution of the DOS PATH command. You MUST run the program with the current DOS directory the directory of the drawing to be converted. 2. LASI2CSF will ask for the CALMA drawing name. This is the name that the drawing would have on the CALMA. This may be defaulted by just pressing ENTER. 3. LASI2CSF reads the CELLS4.DBD file, the CONSTS4.DBD file and the FORM.DBD file in the current directory. CONSTS4.DBD sets the scales that appear in the starting dialog as default values. FORM.DBD will allocate memory for the data that the program processes so that memory usage will correspond to LASI's usage. 4. LASI2CSF asks for the "Disk\Path\Name" of the CSF file. The extension ".CSF" will be added, so don't include it in the name of the CSF file. If a name is unacceptable, it will be reasked until an acceptable one is given. 5. If you have previously run LASI2CSF, there will be a setup file in the drawing directory named LASI2CSF.SET. If this is found, you will be asked if you want to use the information. This can save time if you do conversions often on a drawing. If you choose to use the default setup data, steps 6-10 below will be skipped. 6. LASI2CSF will then ask for scale information. When converting to CALMA you must know what physical units you used and how many LASI units per physical unit you used in the LASI drawing. You must tell LASI2CSF how many CALMA units you want per physical unit. You may default to 1000 basic units/micron and produce an exact 56-bit floating point representation in the CSF file. This seems to be necessary for CADENCE conversion, and perhaps other CAD systems. Important: If you have a problem with exact representation report it to the author. 7. Since LASI has layers 1-64 but CALMA has layers 0-63, you will be asked if you want to relocate LASI layer 64 to any CALMA layer. You can then relocate that layer back to LASI layer 64 if you convert back from CALMA. 8. CALMA uses several parameters to construct text. The most important are Texttype and Font, which may be used to identify the text. You can relate these to each of four LASI text sizes. The parameters that LASI can set are in order: Texttype, which can be 0-63. Font, which can be 0-3. Magnification, which can be used to change text size if the other parameters produce text of the same size. Text Width, which is usually 0, but may have to be set so that certain CAD systems will accept the text. Vertical Justification, which may be set to top, center and bottom. LASI text is always left-bottom justified so normally you will set this to bottom or "B". 9. Certain CAD systems use filenames in lowercase. You can have the names of cells or structures converted to lowercase in the CSF file. 10. If the LASI drawing contains an open polygon, it may be an intentional zero width path, or it may be a mistake where a polygon has not been closed. You can optionally close any open polygons or you can have them translated as a path with zero width. 11. When converting to CALMA, you will be given the choice of converting only certain cells to CALMA structures. This is useful when you have most of your structures already in the CALMA. If you chose to select certain cells to be converted, you will be given a choice of also converting the lesser cells that are used in the specified cells. A list will be displayed during conversion that will show just what cells are being converted to the CSF file. Running CSF2TLC.EXE 1. When converting from CALMA to LASI path and filename questions similar to those when running LASI2CSF.EXE will be asked. 2. If you have previously run CSF2TLC, there will be a setup file in the drawing directory named CSF2TLC.SET. If this is found, you will be asked if you want to use the information. This can save time if you do conversions often on a drawing. If you choose to use the default setup data, steps 3-8 below will be skipped. 3. When converting from CALMA the physical units will automatically be microns, but you may specify the LASI basic units. 4. You will be asked if you want to use the "2048"VAX filter. If the binary file has been run through a VAX on magtape, it might contain two extra characters at beginning of a VAX file record. You can tell CSF2TLC to drop two characters every 2048 characters. If errors occur try this option. 5. You will then be asked for the layers and the datatypes to be converted. You respond to this question with the notation similar to the VIEW, OPEN, etc. commands in LASI, with numbers separated by spaces or dashes. A space separates individual layers and a dash means "include all layers between". 6. You will be given the option of converting CALMA 4-sided rectangular boundaries to LASI boxes. If the rectangular boundaries are not to be modified, boxes are better for LASI. 7. There is an option to convert any text found in the stream file to LASI text. The Texttype number (0-63) or the Font number (0-3) in a CALMA text record may be related to a LASI text size. A texttype is always present in a CALMA text record, but font may also be used by other CAD systems. If a texttype of 0-63 is related to a LASI text size, it will be used first, regardless of the font set. If you want to use font, enter "-" as the texttype to use. If neither texttype nor font is designated, a default minimum set of parameters will be used. Additionally you may use some of the other CALMA text parameters by setting them to "y" or "n": If magnification information is present, it may be used. If orientation (+/-90, 180 deg) is present, it may be used. If vertical justification information is present, it may be used. Any multiple line CALMA text will be broken into separate LASI text lines, and any horizontal justification will be changed to left justification. The text that you get may not look exactly the same as the original text since LASI uses its own character patterns. 8. You will be asked if you want to relocate CALMA layer 0 to any LASI layer (1-64). Any CALMA layer 0 will default to LASI layer 64. 9. Like LASI2CSF, CSF2TLC request options on just which cells or structures you want to be converted. You may name specific cells or structures to be converted if a few are wanted. If the named structures contain other structures that have not been named, CSF2TLC will find these and try to convert them also. You may therefore name only your top structure and CSF2TLC will find the rest. 10. LASI cellnames must be legal names for DOS files. The names of the CALMA structures may not conform to DOS standards and must be changed. CSF2TLC will try to find acceptable names, but you may also manually change any illegal names. 11. You will be asked if you want CSF2TLC to replace any TLC files that it finds already in the directory. Otherwise, CSF2TLC will keep any old TLC files that it finds and will only create the new ones that it needs. In most questions, the default entry will appear in the parentheses if one is available. Pressing ENTER defaults. CSF2TLC Operations CSF2TLC first scans the CSF file to determine a hierarchy of cells. It also tries to convert CALMA structure names to names that are DOS acceptable. If a name is found that is a reserved word such as "PRN", or the name contains characters that are illegal in DOS such as "*", you will be asked for a substitute name. If you have told CSF2TLC not to try to rename, any names with greater than 8 characters will call for a substitute also. CSF2TLC will search the current directory for the TLC cell file of a cell that might not exist as a structure in the CSF file, but still be used in other structures in the CSF file. This allows the TLC file of a cell to be reconstructed without the lesser cells being present as structures in the CSF file. The only requirement is that the TLC files of its lesser cells exist already in the drawing directory. After the scanning has been done to establish hierarchy and the presence of TLC files, a list of the cell names, their rank, the presence of the structure in the CSF file, the presence of a TLC file in the directory and the structure name is printed. If the TLC file is already present it is retained even though the structure may exist in the CSF file. To have a new TLC file generated, the old TLC file must be deleted from the current directory, or the option of replacing all TLC files must be used when running CSF2TLC. If the lesser cell exist neither as a structure in the CSF file nor as a TLC file in the drawing directory, then the name of the expected cell is inserted into the TLC file being made and a warning message is given. Possible Problems On conversion from CALMA to LASI, if any structures are missing and a TLC file is not present, there is no way to tell if the missing structures or TLC files contain other missing structures or cells. Presently, arrays of objects do not exist in LASI. Therefore, when converting from CALMA, CSF2TLC makes arrays by copying cells. This can fill the LASI cell capacity if you don't watch out. When CSF2TLC encounters text in a CSF file, it ignores justification and breaks down any multi-line CALMA text into single line LASI text objects. This means that your translated text may not be located in the same place. You should also use only single line left justified text on the CALMA or other drawing system if you intend to bring it into LASI. Some features of CALMA are presently simply ignored, such as stretched components, and nodes. If you abort while CSF2TLC is making a TLC file you will probably get an incomplete file. Erase it. HPGL Conversion Introduction LASI drawings can be quit large and complex. It is necessary to produce large plots to examine drawings for errors, or just for display. LASI therefore must be able to produce plots. The most commonly used plotting language is Hewlett-Packard's HPGL (Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language), which is used by all H-P and many other makes of plotters. By using the LASI2HP.EXE program, LASI drawings can be converted directly into HPGL, either as a file, or as a direct drive for a plotter from one of the personal computer's serial ports. Configuration Files Before you run LASI2HP on anything you must make a configuration data file. Run "lasi2hp" and answer "y" to the Configure (y or n) prompt. The program stores plotting configurations in ".PCF" files. The title of a configuration must conform to DOS file naming rules. These files remain in the drawing directory. Some of the questions asked will be defaulted from the program initialization or the previous configuration file. Pressing ENTER to any question will default to the value show in parentheses. Otherwise enter the new value. Some of the questions will be obvious and some may need explanation: 1. Configuration will ask if your plotter has a center or lower-left (bottom-left) hardware origin. Most small plotters have a lower-left origin, while larger plotters use a center origin. Read your plotter manual for this information. 2. The borders that you must specify are the distance at the edges of a sheet of paper that the plotter can't use, i.e. roller track, etc. Read your plotter manual for this distance. The size of your paper less these borders is the useful size of your paper. 3. You can set the location and size of the plotting area on the paper by specifying the left, bottom, right and top edges. You can use this to make multiple drawings on a single sheet of paper. 4. If you use hardwired handshaking to keep the plotter buffer from being overflowed by plotting data, you will be asked if you want to use the DSR (data set ready) line or the CTS (clear to send) line to detect that the plotter buffer is full. On an AT type of PC these lines are pins 6 and 8 respectively on a 9-pin serial port. The Hewlett-Packard plotters normally indicate a full buffer by dropping the DTR (pin 20 on the 25-pin RS-232 connector) line. This line can be connected to either CTS or DSR, but DSR is preferred. 5. LASI2HP will ask you if you want to use your plotter's polygon mode commands. These are the commands PM, EP and FP which are available on the better plotters (see your plotter manual). These commands allow you to fill closed polygon areas. If this mode is used paths will be expanded into a closed polygon area. 6. If you want to have paths standout in the drawing, answer that you want path center lines drawn. Paths will be drawn with a dashed line along their center. 7. LASI2HP will draw any cells that are displayed in LASI Cell Mode as an outline either in outline or in full detail. The configuration may set to always draw fully if desired. You may also set the pen to be used for outlines. 8. Each layer has three attributes, Pen, Line and Fill. You may assign attributes randomly, by giving a layer number 1 to 64 to the "Layer?" question. Pressing ENTER only will end the assignment process. Note also that the layer number is displayed in the color you used in the drawing. 9. When assigning pens to layers note that you may enter up to 8 different pens. Your plotter might not support that many, so assign them accordingly. 10. You may assign different line types to make dashed lines. The types are numbered 0-6 and correspond to the line types described in the H-P plotter manual that comes with an H-P plotter. If a line is to be drawn solid, set the layer by pressing only ENTER. A dash "-" will indicate a solid line on that layer. 11. You may set the fill type attribute to be used on a layer. These presently are left crosshatch, right crosshatch, horizontal, vertical and nothing (indicated by "L","R","H","V" and "-"). Boxes will always be filled, but you must use the plotter's polygon mode to fill polygon areas. 12. If a layer has had its Fill set as above, and a line type has also been set, the line type is used as the fill line type. The perimeter of a filled area is drawn solid and not with the line type set for that layer. The spacing of the dashes and fill lines will be calculated from the fill spacing configuration parameter. 13. After you are satisfied with the configuration, you may store it with the same title or any other title. You can save time by copying configurations, make changes, and then storing under a new title. Running LASI2HP.EXE LASI2HP.EXE reads BP4 and CL4 internal files in the local drawing directory. You must be logged into the drawing directory of the cell to be plotted. To drive a plotter directly, the plotter must be connected to one of the computer's serial ports, COM1, COM2, COM3 or COM4. There are 3 ways to run LASI2HP: 1. Run by typing "lasi2hp", which allows you to configure and then run a plot, or to simply make configuration files. 2. Run by typing (or batch filing) "lasi2hp name", where "name" is the cell that you want to plot. In this case configuration must be done previously, and the plot will be fitted to the full size of the cell. 3. Run by typing "lasi2hp name x-center y-center width". This is how LASI passes the particular window to be plotted when the PLOT button is pushed in the LASI System Mode menu. In each case you will be asked for the configuration title and whether your plotter or disk is ready. When making a plotting file you may specify a name, path or disk for the output file. Entering nothing makes a file with the plotted cell's name in the local drawing directory. Hint: If LASI2HP asks for a new scale. You might want to give a scale slightly smaller than the maximum scale indicated. This may eliminate some part of a drawing being cut off due to aspect ratio differences between your paper and the area to be drawn. Other Uses Since the plot file that LASI2HP makes is in standard HPGL language. The file can be changed to other formats using a converter such as HIJAAK. It can also be converted directly by WordPerfect 5.1 and other desktop publishers into drawings that can be inserted into WordPerfect (or other DTP) written text. Drawings made by LASI can therefore be placed directly into reports, theses, dissertations, etc. that are written using common wordprocessors that can do graphics converted from HPGL. The HPGL can be converted into LaserJet format to print high quality diagrams. Also, conversion to FAX format is possible so that you can send high quality fax diagrams using any of the available fax boards. Text Generation Introduction Text is generated by LASI version 4 by storing strings of ASCII characters as though they were paths. A reference point is stored as the first vertex, and then subsequent vertices contain up to 4 ASCII character bytes. When a string of text is drawn, it is expanded much like a path, except that the characters are drawn in sequence from predefined polygon patterns. Each character is defined in the Text Font File. (TXT.DBD is the generic file supplied with the system.) This file may have any name other that TXT.DBD, but this name must be installed the FORM.DBD file using the "text=" parameter. Otherwise the default "TXT.DBD" is assumed. Read the Form File General topic. The Text Font File is a binary file which contains a single record of 128 bytes for each of 96 characters. The characters may be drawn and modified by the user using LASI itself. The information in this file is loaded into memory when LASI is started, so that drawing of text can be done without slow disk access. When entering text, the position is requested and the size and layer are taken from the current pathwidth and layer settings. The text string is then simply typed in and terminated by ENTER. Like paths, text layer, size, orientation and position can be changed using the same commands that are used for paths. The Text Font File The Text Font File is ninety-six 128 byte records long. Each record corresponds to an ASCII character starting at decimal 32 (space) and ending at decimal 127 (delete, non-printing). When a character is typed under LASI, the correct record is found and the information is used to make path objects in the drawing. The records are randomly written by the MAKETXT.EXE program by typing the desired character and then giving the name of the cell which contains the character drawing. The vertices of the path pattern are written in a single byte of a record in the form of the X-coordinate as the upper 4 bits and the Y-coordinate as the lower 4 bits (nibbles). The coordinates may then be only the numbers 0-15. The coordinate combination (15,15) is however prohibited because it is used to indicate the end of a path. A record therefore contains vertex coordinate bytes from 0-254, with 255 decimal (or FF in Hex) bytes marking the end of a path. The remaining bytes in a record are always filled with FF bytes to prevent further paths being made as the record is read. The maximum number of vertices that a record can hold is dependent on the number of independent paths, but can be determined from: total no. vertices = 128 - total no. paths There can be any character drawing in the pattern file corresponding to a given typed character. In fact, different Text Font Files (with different names) can be kept for different uses, and they can be conveniently "turned on" by naming them in the Form File. The Character Field Characters start as little cells containing a drawing of a character. The data format of the character drawing is quite different from a cell and will be describe later. A character is drawn as a rank 1 cell using paths (of 0 width) on a 16x16 (0-15) field of basic drawing units. The lower left corner of the field is position 0,0. The vertices of the paths fall on the basic unit grid points. The vertices may be on any grid point except 15,15. 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x 15 (15,15 not used) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . / \ . . . . . . . . . . . . . / . . \ . . . . . . . . . . . / . . . . \ . . . . . . . . . / . . . . . . \ . . . . . . . / . . . . . . . . \ . . . ^ . . . | _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ | . . . | . . . | . . . . . . . . | . . . Y . . . | . . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (origin) 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 X --> Character Drawing Field in basic units (Letter A Shown) Once a character cell is drawn, the program MAKETXT.EXE is used to install the character in the Text Font File. Usefulness of Text Text is usually used to mark your drawings with information such as the names of cells or component names and values. Text will be translated with the other drawing data into text in other drawing systems. Text may also be used as a pattern for putting writing on IC masks by smashing the text using the SMSH command and giving the resulting polygons some width. Text objects have a very useful property. Text can be considered as a NODE with a NAME. You can therefore use text to mark connection points to cells or subassemblies. You can then search for those points by NAME and obtain a physical location on a drawing. This can be used to do automatic cell placement and interconnection. This means that you can do schematic capture, or do actual layout from wiring lists used by programs like PSpice. Inversely, you can also write programs that locate NODES by position in LASI layouts or schematic drawings and associate TEXT with the NODE. You can therefore produce wiring lists for PSpice directly from drawings that contain node names and device names written ON the drawing. Since the internal form of LASI data is generally proprietary, you would write programs in C or BASIC that operate on TLC files. System Contents LASI System Files LASI.EXE Main program LASIA.EXE No coprocessor version of LASI.EXE LASI2CSF.EXE LASI to CALMA converter LASIDRC.EXE The LASI Design Rule Checking Program CSF2TLC.EXE CALMA to TLC converter LHI.EXE LASI help and information reader LASI2HP.EXE Hewlett-Packard plotter utility MAKETXT.EXE Text Font File maker MANUAL.EXE Manual printer TLC.EXE Transportable cell file converter CELLSORT.EXE Cell sorting utility CMDLAYER.EXE Drawing global layer copy/move/delete utility RESIZE.EXE Resizing utility SNAP.EXE Cell grid snapping utility TILT.EXE Drawing tilting 3-D presentation utility UNDUP.EXE Drawing duplicate object remover utility TLC2CIF.EXE LASI TLC format to CIF format converter CIF2TLC.EXE CIF format to LASI TLC format converter 3TO4.COM LASI vers 3 to vers 4 converter 4TO41.COM LASI 4.0 to 4.1 CONSTS file converter DMHCPY.COM Screen hardcopy for dot matrix FX or LQ type printers LJHCPY.COM Screen hardcopy for LaserJet type printers FORM.DBD Generic configuration file TXT.DBD Generic Text Font File LHI.HLP Main help text file LASIDRC.HLP DRC help text file INSTALL.BAT Batch file for LASI41.EXE installation README. Instructions for LASI41.ZIP installation Optional: (May be included or available on request) LASIDEMO Demonstration OPAMP layout CHRS Text character cell collection System Log System Update Log for Version 4 Changes in Version 4.0: The LASI.EXE program has been completely rewritten in a combination of C and Assembly Language. Many new features have been added, which include: 1. Text objects, which retain the ASCII character identity and which use much less memory than the previous text that was generated from poly objects. The new text is treated as a modified poly object and may be rotated and reflected using the same commands. Since it keeps its ASCII identity, the new text may be translated as true text into other drawing systems. 2. New internal data format, which uses less memory and loads faster. A conversion program 3TO4.COM is supplied to change the old format into the new format. 3. VGA 640x480 pixel display mode support, with automatic VGA sensing, but an optional EGA 640x350 display mode. 4. User definable function keys that allow any command formerly needing mouse or keyboard input to be executed by simply pressing a function button. (40 keys, F1-10, SHIFT F1-10, CTRL F1-10, ALT F1-10) 5. An oversize command OVSZ that replaces the BPEXP.EXE program previously supplied, that allows boxes, poly and paths to be expanded or compressed by a constant distance. 6. Different dashed line patterns that are assigned as an attribute to each drawing layer. 7. A drawing cell collection that can now hold 500 different cells in place of 255 as with previous versions. 8. New hardcopy programs that work with VGA or EGA automatically. 9. A WGRD command that when assigned to a function key accepts working grid size arguments. 10. A CMOV command that moves cells only. 11. Improved RES and CAP commands with automatic measuring. 12. Different text fonts may now be included in the Form File. 13. The cursor can now be toggled between a small cross and crosshairs. 14. LASI.EXE now works only with a coprocessor. Another version LASIA.EXE is supplied for non-coprocessor computers. 15. TLC.EXE now generates token files for missing or incorrect cells. 16. outlined cells now have their name in the lower left corner 17. OUTL and FULL commands now work directly, not only on active cells, and these commands are now resident commands. 18. A cells history feature has been added that allows you to retrace a series of nested cells. 19. The JOIN command now closes open polygons. 20. The working and unit cursor grids can be toggled by pressing the A key or the ALT key. 21. The effect of the cursor window on certain cell commands can be changed by double clicking the mouse. 22. The CALMA conversion programs LASI2CSF.EXE and CSF2TLC.EXE now have more elaborate text conversion facilities. 23. The SMSH command now works on text and boxes. 24. The CALMA Stream converter now allows open polygons to be converted optionally to closed boundaries or zero width paths. Changes in Version 4.1: 1. Rank 1 cells can now be taken from a common "pool" directory and be used in any drawing. Using this feature several PCs can be NETWORKED together with common access to basic cells. 2. The ATTACH and IMPORT commands have been added to be used with cells from the "pool". 3. Missing cell files (BP4 and CL4) now cause a dotted outline to be drawn. 4. VESA compatible VGA 800x600 16 color graphics mode is now supported. 5. A monochrome gray scale mode has been added for VGA monochrome monitors and laptop computers with VGA displays. 6. There are now 64 layers (1-64) available. 7. The design rule checking program LASIDRC.EXE is now included. 8. The help program LHI.EXE can now do searches for individual topics. 9. The mouse now uses direct movement information so that the cursor should work properly in all display modes regardless of the mouse driver you use. 10. Most commands now abort if ESC is pressed. 11. A sort and backup of a drawing is done after a certain amount of time if LASI is left unattended. 12. A backup of a cell drawing is made if any deleting or smashing is done. 13. The OCTO command nolonger cancels any command in progress. 14. Help on a command may now called directly by putting the mouse cursor on a command button and pressing F1. 15. The program MANUAL.EXE has been added that prints a manual. 16. The T key now toggles the text reference point on and off. 17. The CPYLAYER.EXE, MOVLAYER.EXE and DELLAYER.EXE utility programs have been condensed into a single CMDLAYER.EXE utility program. Suggestion Box Suggestions from Users of LASI These are some of the ideas for LASI improvements or for special programs that operate in the LASI drawing environment, listed somewhat in order of priority. Some are fairly ambitious. These changes and new programs are more or less in progress. Expect to see these in future releases of LASI. Since LASI is rather democratic (within limits), people are encouraged to contribute ideas of their own or, even better, to write programs for themselves that do useful things. 1. Schematic/Layout Capture - a utility program that takes schematics or layouts containing schematic information drawn using LASI and produces a circuit network definition list that may be used by PSpice or other circuit analysis programs. 2. Automatic Memory Allocation - the memory space used by objects will be block allocated as it is needed. The operator will not have to be concerned with the expected numbers of objects that will be needed in a drawing, or whether imported drawings will fit correctly. 3. Use of Extended or Expanded Memory - automatic memory allocation will require more drawing data memory than is available in a PC's 640K of conventional memory. To find more memory LASI will have to swap blocks of data to extended (XMS) or expanded (EMS) memory. This will slow LASI down a bit but will allow almost unlimited drawing size. 4. A 32-bit LASI - another version of the LASI drawing program that uses 32-bit position information instead of 16-bit. This would give almost unlimited precision, but would require more memory usage and slightly slower operation. Present IC technology is borderline with 16-bit precision, so this may be the next version of LASI. 5. Automatic Verification - a utility program that uses the properties of design rule checking and text nodes to determine if everything is properly connected in an IC layout. This may be combined with Schematic/Layout Capture listed above. 6. Automatic Layout - a utility program that takes connection information from lists used by simulation programs (various SPICE's) and uses the node property of LASI text to place and interconnect cells. 7. A Prettier Display - although it does most things much more quickly, LASI still has to compete with Windows programs that have attractive graphical user interfaces. LASI is quite simple in the way that it produces a display, and this is reflected in the rather small program size for the amount of function you get. If extended memory is used in the future to hold drawing data, there may be an increased use of graphic resources.