EEC 116 - Printing Designs

Screen Snapshots (recommended for layout)

Printing using the other methods to a grayscale printer is troublesome since printouts typically come out with little to no contrast. Using screenshots of the magic layout window generally yields better results. The following instructions also cover how to remove the gray background to make printouts easier to see.
  1. Zoom to fit your layout fully in the magic layout window. The default magic macro is "v".
  2. Open up GIMP from Applications -> Graphics -> GNU Image Manipulation Program on the lab computers.
  3. Go to File -> Create -> Screenshot in the menu.
  4. Use the tool to capture a screen shot of the window.
  5. If printing to a black & white printer: Use the selection tools to crop the shot as needed. The crop tool is under Image -> Crop to Selection.
  6. If printing to a black & white printer: Use the Select regions by color tool in GIMP (default shortcut is Shift+O) to select the gray background color.
  7. If printing to a black & white printer: Use the Fill Bucket (Shift+B) and set the Affected Area to Fill whole selection. Fill using the color white.
  8. Save and print.

Printing from Magic

  1. In magic with the layout window selected, press s while pointing the cursor outside your cell to select the entire cell. You can also use the box to select just the section of your design you want to print.
  2. In the magic text entry window type 'plot postscript file.eps'.
  3. In the terminal window type 'lpr-magic file.eps'. This will default to the printer in room 2107 but it can be changed by supplying a new destination as the second argument to lpr-magic, such as 'lpr-magic file.eps LJ2110'.
  4. To convert the EPS file to PDF, open a terminal window and type 'epstopdf file.eps'.
  5. If the postscript files are too large for your account quota, print the file directly to the /tmp directory, which is writable by all users, has no quota, and is 1 GB on the ECE machines in 2107. Then either convert to pdf, or for very large files, convert to high-quality jpeg using "gimp".
    6. In some cases, there are problems with some layers and features not showing up very well--usually nwell, pwell, and certain vias. The problem seems to be coming in the conversion from .ps to .pdf. Two alternate workarounds are to print directly with .ps, or using "Print Screen" (see above).

Printing from IRSIM

  1. In the analyzer window select 'Print -> File' and type in a filename such as file.ps.
  2. In a terminal window type 'lpr-irsim file.ps'. This will default to the printer in room 2107 but it can be changed by supplying a new destination as the second argument to lpr-irsim, such as 'lpr-irsim file.ps LJ2110'.
  3. To convert the PS file to PDF, open a terminal window and type 'ps2pdf file.ps file.pdf'.

Common problems


EEC 116 | B. Baas | ECE Dept. | UC Davis 
2019/10/24  Clarifications and reworded text in screenshots section (BB)
2014/10/13  Updates for new redhat version (Tim Andreas)
2013/10/30  Fixed typo in epstopdf found by C. Gao
2013/10/03  Minor update (BB)
2010/09/24  Updated screenshots and made it the primary method (Trevin Murakami)
2008/05/29  Added comments about problems with nwell, pwell, and some vias
2007/06/05  Added comments for very large plot files
2006/04/10  Updated for Spring 2006
2005/04/21  Added printing from IRSIM
2005/04/13  Updated postscript methods
2004/05/24  Started