Method and system for implementing an improved interface for designing electronic layouts

摘要

Disclosed is a method and system for visualizing legal locations of edges and dimensions for an object being placed or edited in the layout. During the design process, visual indicators may be provided to the user to indicate the legal locations at which edges of an object may be placed in the layout. Gravitation and/or snapping may be provided automatically identify and/or move the edges to the legal locations. However, the user can control whether and under what circumstances the gravitation and/or snapping will occur. In this way, the designer does not need to manually place the edges of every single object, which is especially helpful for objects that are intended to have an edge at a legal location. Upon a design choice by the designer, the objects can be edited so that an edge does not need to immediately comply with a design rule.

主权项

1. A computer implemented method implemented with a processor, the method comprising:
receiving instructions to create or edit an object on an electronic design layout; tracking a user input to configure the object; calculating effects of one or more design rules relative to the user input with an interactive layout editing mechanism that includes a processor and calculates the effects to configure the object; displaying a visual indicator of a valid object configuration while affixing a location of an on-screen indicator for the user input when the on-screen indicator is being moved according to the user input, wherein
the visual indicator includes a ghosted image of at least a portion of the object when at least a part of the object falls within an aperture range; and controllably permitting either an invalid object configuration or automatic implementation of the valid object configuration.