Which export format does your mask vendor want?
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 maps each kind of mask vendor to the Glyph command that fits it; every format named below is in the Export menu today.
- 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 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 () 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 : 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 — 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 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 | (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 |
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 | 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 () 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.