Monday 3rd December 2018
Due to a compatibility issue, and my institution choosing to use Layout Editor, I reluctantly switched from LibreCAD to this program. Nowhere is it specified exactly how large your file size needs to be before it simply refuses to save your work in anything but the proprietary format, causing me quite a surprise headache. It appears to prevent me opening it on any machine but this one, rendering its transfer to a lithography room impossible.
Jürgen LayoutEditorFull Monday 3rd December 2018
We strive to make our cloud service as safe as possible. The intention of the LayoutEditor cloud format (LEC) is to prevent an unintended file transfer to a third party computer. The encrypted LEC file format can only be opened on 1) the system it was created on and 2) our cloud server. To transfer the design to a second system, please convert it to a different file format. Holders of a full license key of can do this on their own system. All others can use our cloud-based format conversion service. As you have already noticed, this service was free and without any costs for your design.
The export to GDS, OASIS and some other file formats is limited in the free version to designs with less than 500 shapes. A shape may be a polygon, box, line, text element, cell reference, or array element. So for example a 100x100 array of a single box will be counted as just two shapes -- the box and the array. So even with this limitation on the number of shapes in the free version, quite impressive designs can be exported. The lateral extent of the pattern is not important for the size limitation. There are six file formats including the LayoutEditor Cloud format that can be stored without a size limitation in the free version. Any commercial version does not have any file size limitation.
However, in your specific case, your institute has purchased a SITE license of the LayoutEditor (full version). You just need to load the license key on your system and you are all set.
Jim LayoutEditorFull Saturday 2nd March 2019
So the FREE version is essentially the same as the FULL version with just a few exceptions:
1. You can't save the file in popular formats like GDS and OASIS if it has more than 500 "shapes" (shapes as described above) but you can export to these formats if you use the [Cloud Export service](https://cloud.layouteditor.com/?service) or buy a commercial license at [layouteditor.com](https://layouteditor.com/). You can always save an edited file to your own computer in the LEC format.
2. You can't script in Python/Ruby with OpenAccess-Script (but normal LayoutEditor macros/scripting work fine).
Jim with PhotomaskPORTAL