Which export format does your mask vendor want?
File → Export in Glyph writes GDS's own per-layer masks, DXF, CIF, OASIS, SVG, EPS and PNG — seven destinations from one drawing. The part that trips people up isn't the button, it's knowing which one your actual vendor reads. This guide is a straight map from mask-vendor type to the Glyph command that fits it, with no new export format and no code change — every format named below already ships; this page only closes the "which one do I click" gap.
Time: ~6 min. You'll need: nothing to download — this is a reference, not a build-along. If you want the general export/import mechanics (CIF, OASIS, DXF, layer maps) walked step by step in the live app instead, see Export to your toolchain.
The three vendor archetypes
Transparency / film photoplot houses
A film or transparency photoplotter exposes onto a physical sheet at a fixed resolution rather than reading vector layout data the way a mask shop's own pattern generator does. That makes it a raster or print-format consumer, not a native-GDS one. Use File → Export ▸ Export figure… and pick .png (or .svg/.eps if the plotter's own front-end takes vector art):
- Give the figure a physical width in millimetres at a chosen dpi — the dialog shows the resulting pixel dimensions live, so the plot lands at the size you actually specified rather than whatever the plotter assumes from a bare pixel count.
- Use the Area control to export the whole design or just the region you're plotting, so you don't crop by hand afterward.
- The Export EPS command (
File → Export ▸ Export EPS…) is the one-click version of the same output for a toolchain (or a plotter's own RIP software) that specifically wants PostScript rather than a dialog full of options.
Direct-write laser or e-beam writers
Modern direct-write control software (laser pattern generators and e-beam writers alike) overwhelmingly reads GDSII natively — that's the format the whole rest of Glyph is built around, so Ctrl+S already produces exactly what these tools expect, with nothing extra to export. If a specific writer's software instead expects DXF (some laser-writer front ends, and any tool descended from a mechanical-CAD lineage), use File → Export ▸ Export DXF…: outlines export exact, each Glyph cell becomes a DXF block, and 1 drawing unit is fixed at 1 nanometre so there's no unit-scale guesswork on the other end.
Either way, set your process's real minimum feature size before you export — Verify → Design rules… ships one-click presets sized to exactly this vendor category (Laser (1.5 µm), E-beam (200 nm)), so F7 catches a feature your writer physically can't resolve before it's cut, not after. See Run a design-rule check before you expose.
Chrome photomask shops
A chrome photomask shop plates one physical mask per layer, so the shop wants one file per layer, not one file with every layer folded together. That's exactly what File → Export ▸ Export per layer… writes: a separate .gds per layer — the full cell hierarchy filtered down to that layer's own geometry, across every datatype — named {base}_L{n}[_DF/_CF].gds, so each plate arrives as its own proofable artifact. Download one layer at a time, or "Download all" for the whole set in one pass.
Quick-reference table
| Vendor type | What they consume | Use this in Glyph | What survives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transparency / film photoplot house | A raster image or a print-vector page at a known physical size | File → Export ▸ Export figure… (PNG at a chosen mm width/dpi, or SVG/EPS) |
Exact geometry, flattened (SREF/AREF fully expanded); EPS has no transparency and sets text in a base-14 font (Courier) — see the EPS caveats in the docs. |
| Direct-write laser / e-beam writer | GDSII natively, or DXF for a CAD-lineage front end | Plain .gds (Ctrl+S) — no export step needed — or File → Export ▸ Export DXF… |
GDS: exact, lossless — Glyph's own native format. DXF: exact outlines; a path's end-cap style is lost (always reads back flush-capped); colour is quantized onto a 16-entry AutoCAD palette. |
| Chrome photomask shop | One GDSII file per physical mask layer | File → Export ▸ Export per layer… |
Exact — each output file is a real GDS boundary/path/ref subset for one layer, not a re-derived approximation. |
The What survives each format table in the docs is the source of truth these rows summarize — it covers every writer (GDS, OASIS, CIF, DXF, SVG, EPS), not just the three above, so check it directly for anything this page doesn't cover: Arrange — export and interop.
The gap this page exists to name honestly
Some academic PDMS/soft-lithography labs specifically ask for DXF or plain PDF/vector art, not GDS — a pattern confirmed directly against the Fluigent OxyGEN and Elveflow ESI user manuals (neither tool's own documentation contains a single GDS/CAD reference; chip layout is treated as strictly upstream, someone else's problem). Glyph's DXF export covers the "DXF" half of that ask. It does not cover the "plain PDF" half — Glyph has no PDF writer, and this page isn't proposing one. If a vendor or lab specifically wants a .pdf, the closest honest path today is exporting SVG or EPS (File → Export ▸ Export figure…) and converting that to PDF in a vector editor or a browser's own print-to-PDF — a real extra step, not something Glyph does for you. Verify with your specific vendor which of these they can actually ingest before you commit to a format — "transparency photoplot" and "direct-write" are categories, not a guarantee about any one shop's intake pipeline.
Next steps
Export to your toolchain walks CIF, OASIS, DXF and layer-map export step by step in the live app, including the honest round-trip proof for each. Run a design-rule check before you expose covers the writer-preset min-feature rules mentioned above. If your chip is a microfluidic design specifically, Design a microfluidic chip with Quake valves is the companion guide for the layout side of this same workflow. For a one-off format conversion outside the editor entirely — no Glyph document involved — see the GDS ↔ DXF converter and the rest of the free converters.