Layout Knowledge Base

About these notes

What this knowledge base is for, and how to correct it.

This site is a knowledge base on layout: how people draw the geometry that factories turn into chips, masks, MEMS parts, microfluidic channels, and printed circuit boards. It is written so a newcomer can follow the drawing, not only the jargon.

Mission

These notes exist as an independent place to explain the ideas behind the drawings. The knowledge base is not a product manual, not a company brochure, and not affiliated with any foundry or EDA vendor as documentation.

Questions and corrections: hello@klayout.com.

What you will find here

  • Notes — long-form lessons on shapes, layers, hierarchy, files, masks, boards, MEMS, and related craft. Most notes aim for roughly a thousand words with figures drawn from real layout geometry.
  • A chip tutorial series — a walk from encoder theory through Verilog, synthesis, place-and-route, and GDS, using open tools so you can reproduce the steps.
  • Word pages — short glossary entries that define a term in plain language and point back into the notes.

The front page rotates featured notes and lets you filter by topic. Search is available from the header.

How the writing works

Notes start from something a beginner can see or touch — a green board, a photograph of a tiny chip, a channel for liquid — and only then introduce the words shops use. Every published note is human-edited. Drafting tools were used on some pages the way a spellchecker is — useful, and capable of confident errors (wrong rule, mixed processes, over-sure tone). If a sentence smells off, it might be. Corrections to hello@klayout.com are welcome and used.

Nothing here replaces a vendor manual, a foundry process design kit (PDK), or a fab’s design-rule document. Treat the notes as a careful introduction, not as tapeout authority.

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