KLayout

With planar geometric shapes, text labels and other relevant information stored within, both GDS and OASIS formats are two of the most commonly used formats for representing and expressing electronic patterns for integrated circuits and chipsets.

KLayout is an intuitive piece of software that is designed from the ground up to not only make it as simple as possible for you to view GDS and OASIS files but also to effortlessly edit them or actually build layout designs from scratch.

Subsequent to a smooth installation process and upon launching the app, you are greeted by a clear-cut and well thought-out user interface, with almost all the app's important features right on display and within effortless reach.

Probably the first thing that you should know is the fact that the utility works just fine with multiple layouts at the same time, in the same window. Upon close inspection, you can discover that the app packs a useful set of features for both viewing and editing layout files.

This said, thanks to its built-in layer configurator, you can view the fill patterns and colors, customize animations, transparency levels, the properties of a group of layers and rename, copy, paste and remove layer attributes.

Flexible rulers, shape and instance browsers, multiple zoom modes, screenshots features, support for bookmarks are also part of KLayout's feature list.

What is more, you can take advantage of the image overlay capabilities and load and place PNG, JPG and GIF files over your projects.

When it comes to the editing features, you should be pleased to hear that the app comes with a wide selection of smart drawing tools, with support for hierarchical and other, advanced, layer operations.

Taking everything into consideration, KLayout is an efficient and trustworthy tool for both editing and viewing GDS and OASIS files.

With its extensive set of features, it should be enough for the large majority of users looking to work with integrated circuits layouts but, if this is not the case, you can extend the app's capabilities to a great extent with the help of custom Ruby scripts. You can download both the installer and portable editions from this page.