Please confirm the following steps are executed before using the KLayout /SiEPIC flow:

1. Install KLayout version 0.25 and above: https://www.klayout.de/build.html
   

1. Install SiEPIC-Tools: Details on how to install SiEPIC-Tools can be found at SiEPIC-Tools’ GitHub installation link: https://github.com/lukasc-ubc/SiEPIC-Tools/wiki/Installation
   

1. ·Copy the EPDA_assisted_tapeout\KLayout\AIMPhotonics_PDK folder (which is obtained from AIM when you gain access to the PDK) to the following directory. The destination path may be different depending on your KLayout installation.
   

Once you successfully installed SiEPIC-tools and AIMPhotonics_PDK, you will see the SiEPIC-tools showing up on KLayout’s main menu and AIMPhotonics_PDK listed in the drop-down menu on the tool bar. To use AIMPhotonics_PDK, please select it from the drop-down menu and click on it.  The technology of the currently selected layout is shown in the status bar located at the lower left corner of the main window. Please see Figure 1 for an example KLayout window with SiEPIC-Tools and AIMPhotonics_PDK installed.

To make SiEPIC tools and Lumerical API work with KLayout on a linux system can be challenging. You may reference the following steps proposed by Prof. Preble from RIT for a possible solution on CentOS 7. Please note that every system is different. This solution might not work for your system. You will also need to install Python 3 first.

1. Install Qt5 (yum install qt5*).
   

1. Compile KLayout (it should automatically detect Qt5 and Python 3). Please check KLayout website https://www.klayout.de/build.html for details on how to build KLayout yourself.
   

1. After a very long time KLayout will create a build-release folder.
   

1. Copy /usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/platforms to the build-release folder.
   

1. Add KLayout and Lumerical to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH (export LD_LIBRARY_PATH= $LD_LIBRARY_PATH: /path-to-build-release:/opt/lumerical/2020a/lib)