Abstract: Disclosed is an approach to implement snapping techniques that aid the interactive, assisted, or automatic placement of layout instances or groups of layout instances for generating a legal placement layout while reducing or entirely eliminating any subsequent or separate performance of design rule checking with respect to the relevant design rules, constraints, or requirements governing the legality of the instances or groups of instances placed in the placement layout.

Abstract: Disclosed are techniques for implementing placement using row templates for an electronic design using row templates. These techniques identify or create a row region in a layout of an electronic design. A row template is applied to the row region to create one or more placement rows in the row region. One or more layout circuit components may then be placed into one or more rows or at one or more locations to create a legal placement layout by guiding placement of the one or more layout circuit components with the row template.

Abstract: Disclosed is a method and system for visualizing legal locations of edges and dimensions for an object being placed or edited in the layout. During the design process, visual indicators may be provided to the user to indicate the legal locations at which edges of an object may be placed in the layout. Gravitation and/or snapping may be provided automatically identify and/or move the edges to the legal locations. However, the user can control whether and under what circumstances the gravitation and/or snapping will occur. In this way, the designer does not need to manually place the edges of every single object, which is especially helpful for objects that are intended to have an edge at a legal location. Upon a design choice by the designer, the objects can be edited so that an edge does not need to immediately comply with a design rule.