What is the best layout editor?

I think thise is a Cadence Virtuoso for IC design.
And Microwind for education.

Cadence virtuoso!

widely used cadence virtuoso layout editor
any doubt!!!

use orcad layout plus.
its ultimately the best.

every too; has got its own advantages & disadvantages too.

selecting the exact one is the thing which is most inportant.

for example laker is good for doing designs up to block level.

virtuso is best for doing design at chip level.

laker never crashers,but yet some times virtuso crashes.

lot more to share bcz i have worked on both.

I have used virtuoso for a long while and I think it is very practical and powerful.
Recently ,our laboratory buy silvaco's software from sigapore,so I must try to use Expert . The first experssion Expert give us is that it is not very kind and considerate and something else . Anyway, I am not very satisfied about it.
I am very appreciate if anybody can share his/her useful experience to us.
my msn is zhaojun993@hotmail.com

I think the Cadence Virtuoso is very good layout editor for analog and digital design both, especially mixed signal. The engine has enough power

im using Virtuoso, VirtuosoXL, SX9000...
with regards to performance, VirtuosoXL still has a lot of bugs...

virtuoso is best layout editor

I have been using Virtuso for quite a long time and i bet this would be the best.

Virtuoso (w/wh XL) is good. Just good.

Laker have a lot of new tipps that can help you a lot, depending of what kind of license you have (L1,L2 or L3). Averrage.

Now I saw a presentation of Cadence 6.1 (will come in 2007-2008).... the next generetion......
Is more than expected. This will be definetly the best Layout / schematic / verification tool! A lot of features that will help you to design more secure and acurate!
Enjoy!
Gabriel.

Iam using Tanner EDA tools 10.12 version it good tool. as most big companices use tanner for layout.

Microwind is also good but not good as compared to Tanner.

Cedence is cheaper compared to Tanner.

I saw that some people said that virtuoso have many crashes and lake not.
I'm not agree.....
Laker have problems....after crash.
Let say select "net function". You can select a net from the top, and you will obtain a "temp" cell with the entire net (down in hierarchy). This is good, because you can export that net(or nets ) in gds and to run different analises...cross-talk, critical path delay, of course parasitics....With this function also you can extract the power/ground plan, in order to check for power dropp, stared ground and other...
BUT if your chip is big enough....this function will crash laker after a few minutes.
(But this select net....is bed also in Virtuoso.....in some revisions just don't work....or haven't a stop layer and the selection will go down from metals to diffusions and up again trough diffusion so you will select everithing but not a net)
Now, when laker crash, you will have a lot of problems in having wrtite acces in the library used for extract, and in all cells from that library.
They haven't a function like Design Recovery.
Also when two engineers work on the same libraryes, but on DIFFERENT cells (like usual in a project), is possible after saving the changed cells, to see that only one was changed! This is because the file which keep information about all cells in a library can not be write by two users at a time (normal). So the first user who open a cell for edit, will keep the control. The strange thing is that THEY fixed this problem in a way....but still act in random.

On the other hand, Laker is good not only for block level design, but also for chip level.
To prepare a reticle with laker mean somthing!
Personaly I used laker for IC up to 28E+06 transistors (not gates equivalent) and for reticles around 100E+06 transistors with a gds size around 2.1 Gb.
More...let us talk about (sex?) Virtuoso stream in / out when a big design (NOT FLATENED) with dummy layers added inside (for layer density coverage) is exported and the gds size is bigger than 400Meg.....You will see that after import (stream in), your cells will be shifted from the origin (0,0) .....nice, didn't it? And if the fab doesen't check...you will obtain something...but not a chip.
If you export a gds with laker...let say 2Gb gds file, and you will import in Virtuoso and also in laker (back for check), you will have a nice surprise...everithing is correct in both tools. Conclusion....Stream Out from Virtuoso don't work properly for big designs.....Of course....you can work around...to export two or more small gds files with Virtuoso and to put all togather in a TOP gds using scripts.....
But why to use scripts?

So, Virtuoso is good, but let me to be fair.... Cadence still need to improve Virtuoso and icfb.
Laker is good too, but like other tools, is not perfect (and is "new" on the market!!!! not like Cadence!!!)

Enjoy!
Gabriel.

Hi All,

I used LEDIT and Silvao Expert, i think it will depend on how exposed are you on the given tool. Both tools are good and powerfull. They have enough power to do the rewuired task, however Virtuoso is famous and it always the skills sought by other companies if you apply for another Job.

I might as well try to use VIrtuoso and Laker, i heat a lot of good things about this tool.

Hi Lensky, nice post.

Regards

L editor

l-edit is my choose.

virtuoso
vxl ( with some bugs exist and some constrains but useful)

I would go with L-Edit. Microwind is the best learning tool though.

Virtuso is good but i like free tools with source code most like MAGIC

Virtuoso intergrates with other tools is easy,but laker is more efficient.