Glyph guides
Worked, step-by-step examples that take a real layout task end to end in Glyph.
- Design Your First Photomask (GDSII) in the Browser | Glyph — A step-by-step guide to drawing, layering, instancing, and exporting your first GDSII photomask layout in Glyph, a free browser-based mask editor.
- Convert an Image to GDSII — Trace a Bitmap | Glyph — Import a PNG or JPG as a reference bitmap in Glyph, trace it into polygons with cutoff, steps, edges, or colors mode, then export the traced geometry to GDSII.
- Run a Design-Rule Check Before You Expose a Mask | Glyph — How to set min-width, min-spacing, and min-area rules, run F7 design-rule check, and step through and fix violations before exporting a mask in Glyph.
- Export Publication-Quality Figures From a GDS Layout | Glyph — How to export a GDS mask layout as a clean SVG or PNG figure — white background, solid fills, scale bar, and layer legend — using Glyph's Export figure tool.
- Thermo-Optic Phase Shifter — Waveguide + Heater | Glyph — Place Glyph's parametric thermo-optic phase shifter — a waveguide core, resistive heater, and contact pads — and map its layer roles to real GDS layers.
- Draw a Waveguide Ring Resonator in Glyph | Glyph — Place Glyph's parametric ring-resonator component — an annular waveguide evanescently coupled to a straight bus — and tune the coupling gap between them.
- Design a Microfluidic Chip with Quake Valves | Glyph — Build a two-layer PDMS Quake valve — a control channel crossing a flow channel — from Glyph's Microfluidics library, mapped to separate GDS layers.
- MEMS Comb-Drive Layout with AREF & Boolean Ops | Glyph — Build a two-comb MEMS electrostatic actuator in Glyph — one finger repeated with AREF, flattened, and boolean-unioned into a suspended, cantilever structure.
- Recover Unsaved Work and Fix Common Glyph Issues | Glyph — How Glyph's autosave and Recover prompt protect your work after a crash, plus fixes for common issues — files that won't open, hidden layers, and missing fonts.
- Draw GDSII with AI — Connect an MCP Client | Glyph — How to connect any MCP client — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or another — to a running Glyph tab so it can draw GDSII geometry as ordinary, undo-tracked edits.