RSoft CAD Manual — Quick Guide and Overview

What RSoft CAD is

RSoft CAD is a layout and design tool within the Synopsys RSoft Photonic Component Design Suite used to create, edit, and export 2D photonic device geometries and mask layouts for simulation and fabrication. It supports drawing primitives, boolean operations, layer management, grid/snapping, text/annotations, and exports common file formats for downstream simulators (e.g., BPM, FDTD) and mask generation.

• Full list of keyboard shortcuts (e.g., Ctrl+Shift+D to duplicate selected component with offset).
• Material refractive index curves for standard semiconductors (pre-2000s databases).
• Conversion tables between RSoft units and standard MKS.

Overview — RSoft CAD (RSoft Layout / xbcad)

RSoft CAD (often invoked as xbcad or RSoft CAD Layout) is the graphical layout and pre/post-processing environment for the RSoft photonics toolset (BeamPROP, FullWAVE, DiffractMOD, GratingMOD, FemSIM, BandSOLVE, etc.). It provides a visual editor to build planar and 3D device geometries, assign materials and boundary conditions, create mesh and simulation regions, launch solvers, and view results.

Key Features and Benefits