Pplot is a program which was originally written as a nice printer interface to the Berkeley tools "magic" (now in version 6.5). It appears to have grown out of the less-evolved "cifplot" (original program which came with the Berkeley tools) and "cif2ps" (a slight update on the original).

"pplot" attempts to make a plot which is uncluttered and easy to interpret. It does this by using a search algorithm to find the edges of each CIF layer, and then renders the entire layer at once, drawing a border around it. The result is much more coherent than the usual plot method of drawing each CIF rectangle as it appears in the CIF output.

Printing Layouts with Pplot

If you have setup your path correctly by source'ing the startup script, you should be able to invoke pplot. Pplot takes a CIF file as an input. CIF is a standardized file format used by fabrication facilities to share layouts. You can generate a .cif file from magic layout by doing the following while in Magic:

                        :cif

Make sure that the cif output style is set to "plot". Do this by typing ":cif ostyle" Generate a .cif file from your layout by typing ":cif" while the cursor is in the layout window. More information on CIF can be found at Format Conversion to CIF and Calma and http://www.rulabinsky.com/cavd/text/chapb.html.

From the UNIX command line use pplot. For example: 

                            pplot [options] cif-file
 

The complete usage for pplot is as follows:

                            -p FILE read stipple patterns from FILE
                            -T TECH use technology TECH
                            -k FILE keep PostScript output in FILE (don't spool)
                            -F FONT use FONT for strings (def. Helvetica)
                            -fp FILE use FILE as the PostScript prologue
                            -f NUM use a NUM size font (def. 5.0)
                            -PPRINTER send output to PRINTER
                            -s FLOAT[x] scale plot by FLOAT factor
                            -d DEPTH display up to DEPTH levels
                            -b BANNER use BANNER as the plot title
                            -h don't print the header page
                            -I don't ask for confirmation, always print
                            -l LAYERS don't display LAYERS (separated by ',')
                            -R don't rotate to fit in page
                            -DFORMAT print date using FORMAT ([m][w][d][y][h])
                            -V DEV generate output for DEV (def. PS)
                            -# NUM print NUM copies
 

Of particular interest should be the -f and the -d options. The -f option allows you to set the font size (smallest=1). So if you don't want your pesky labels cluttering up the layout, set the font to be small. Another cleaner way to not print labels is to use the -l allText option.

The -d option allows you to set the number of levels of hierarchy that you push down. Layouts can be printed at various stages in your hierarchy, however, sometimes you might not want to see all your levels of hierarchy since this might opaque things on a black and white laser printer. Therefore, this option is very useful.

The -l allText option allows you to plot your layout with no labels which might be good as your layouts grow in size.

The -k flag will output your layout to a file instead of the local printer. If you use the -k option it will output your layout to a postscript file that you can transfer anywhere. In addition, the postscript output has EPS encapsulation which means you can incorporate it into your favorite document.

My favorite options are the following to run pplot:

                pplot -k file.ps -l allText -d 10 file.cif