Current Capabilities of SKILL as an OpenAccess ASCII Representation

With all the great strides in performance, memory compactness, open-source, etc. that OpenAccess is making, our engineers keep reminding us of one key shortcoming of the OA data model: ease of use. The binary data model requires the API for access. Yet, the end users of OpenAccess are not full-time software engineers or C programmers—they are circuit designers, layout designers—and they strongly desire direct visibility into the database, along with the ability to perform simple tasks (such as adding a shape) quickly and easily. Additionally, API-only access only provides visibility into the database inasmuch as you know what it is you are looking for—and know the API call to get it.