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Design Rule Check

Author: Chenyuan Zhao

1. In this tutorial, how to use Calibre to check the layout’s design rule will be introduced. Once

the routing is accomplished, you need to run the DRC (Design Rule Check) to verify your

routing. From the Layout Editing window, select “Calibre” from the top menu, followed by

“Run DRC”. The DRC Calibre Interactive window pops up and asks to load the pre-saved

“runset” file, simply click “Cancel”.

2. On the DRC Calibre Interactive window, click “Rules”, followed by “…” that is located on the

right hand side under the DRC Rules File section; a window is then popped up and ask you to

define the location of the rule file. Please enter the following path:

“/home/PDK/PDK_Cadence/TSMC/TSMC180/TSMC180Install/Calibre/drc/calibre.drc”

Then, click “OK”, followed by “Run DRC”.

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3. When the DRC check was finished, the DRC Result window pops up. To view all the DRC errors,

click the “Show All” icon, and select “Show Unresolved”.

4. From the DRC Result window, the top-left panel indicates all DRC errors. The top-right panel

determines the number of errors that correlate with the same error type, it also show you

the exact error location on the layout. The bottom panel describes the error information.

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You need to correct all errors except marking with “****_DENSITY.log”.