US 6,983,440 B1
Shape abstraction mechanism
Eric Nequist, Monte Sereno, Calif. (US)
Assigned to Cadence Design Systems, Inc., San Jose, Calif. (US)
Filed on Jan. 14, 2003, as Appl. No. 10/342,824.
Int. Cl. G06F 17/50 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 716—11 48 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of representing a design of an electronic system having multiple hierarchial levels dispersed over multiple physical layers, the method comprising:
for each physical layer, storing one or more master copies of elements for the physical layer;
generating a hierarchy of instances of shapes having n levels, where n is an integer greater than or equal to 1, each instance of a shape corresponding to one of the master copies of elements; and
for each physical layer, generating a hierarchy of shadows having the n levels, each shadow tracking a set of boundaries for one or more shapes from one or more levels of the n levels in the hierarchy of instances of shapes that exist on each layer of the design.