ANSYS Multiphysics can direclty import the popular Caltech Intermediate Format (CIF) layout format. The CIF format was developed initially by the University community but has evolved into a very common data format throughout the MEMS commercial world. The CIF format contains 2-D hierarchical geometry data in the form of a terse, but readable ASCII file. For those interested in a more complete description of the format, Steve Rubin of Static Free Software has written an excellent online book "Computer Aids for VLSI Design" with a detailed CIF section.
The CIF import ability in ANSYS Multiphysics is provided free of charge, just like our IGES import. It is accessed from the FILE>IMPORT menu:
The user is then prompted to select the CIF file to import, apply a scale factor, and a layer offset. Every layer in the CIF file will be imported, and the layer offset paramater will space the layers vertically. After import, the geometry can be sliced., diced, extruded into volumes just like any other object using the ANSYS /PREP7 preprocessor. (Typcaily the entire CIF file is not used in the analysis, as this would result in an extremely large model, most users simply delete the regions not required and focus on analysing a single device or part of a device).
This chip has comb drives, thermal actuators & pop up mirrors.
This example has a two axis thermal actuator array, designed to move pop up mirrors.
