IC3D

Convert your .gds to .gltf files to create photo-real animations of your photonic/electronic integrated circuits.

• ✍🏻 Define your process for each layer easily (i.e. materials, layer heights).
• 📐 Converts the .gds to the common .gltf file format for 3D objects including BDSF material based on the defined process.
• 🎨 Import the .gltf file into Blender (or any other 3D software of your choice) to create a 3D render.

This code is based on https://github.com/mbalestrini/GDS2glTF which in turn is based on https://github.com/dteal/gdsiistl. The main changes here ensure that complex nested cells, flips, and rotations are done correctly so that complex integrated photonics designs can be rendered in 3D.

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🚀 Get Started

Note

Feel free to reach out to me on X (formerly Twitter) @QuentinWach if you need help to set this up and get started. I'd love to help and get some feedback. 😃

1. Install. Clone the repository. Then navigate to the directory in your terminal and activate whatever environment you want to use, then:

pip install -r requirements.txt

This installs all the required libraries. Or it should. When using Anaconda you may encounter the error "ERROR: Failed building wheel for gdspy". You can resolve this issue by opening the Anaconda shell directly, activating the chosen environment, and running:

conda install gdspy

The run the requirements install command again just to make sure all the requirements are fulfilled.

2. Create 3D File. Open layers.py. This file defines what each layer represents and what layers you want to export to a 3D file. An example is given which should make it clear how to use it. Once done with that, you can go ahead and test the conversion by running

python main.py test.gds

which converts the test.gds file into a .gds.gltf file. You can then import it into any 3D rendering software or game engine of your choice.

3. Render with Blender. Blender is a free and open-source option to create visualizations of the chip's 3D file. Open Blender and import the .gltf file directly which will display it with the proper materials and geometry as defined by your layer/process file.

I recommend watching this Product Design and Rendering Blender Tutorial.