laylight

laylight is a Python toolkit for photonic layout design. Devices are Python classes; the library builds the Laylight IR from them, and the Laylight compiler, the laylight command line, turns the IR into GDSII.

laylight is a sub-product of PhotonStack, focused on making photonic design more programmable, composable, and easier to explore.

Why laylight

Photonic layout work often mixes device geometry, parameter sweeps, custom scripts, and visualization. laylight provides a Python-first way to:

• define photonic structures with reusable, parameterized devices
• chain devices port to port with Placer
• write layouts that carry their cells' parameters, ports and connections, through the same compiler as the Laylight DSL

Documentation and tools

• Documentation: laylight.photonstack.io
• Playground: laylight.photonstack.io/playground
• VS Code extension: PhotonStack/laylight-vscode-extension

Installation

pip install laylight

This installs the laylight command line too (the laylight-cli package), which sends anonymous usage statistics unless LAYLIGHT_TELEMETRY=0 is set. PNG previews and KLayout PCells need KLayout:

pip install "laylight[klayout]"

Simple example

import laylight
from laylight.render import new_layout
from laylight.structure.wg import WGStraight

layout, top, tech = new_layout("DEMO")

device = WGStraight(
    length=200,
    width=0.5,
    layout=layout,
    tech=tech,
)

laylight.Placer(device).into(top)
layout.write("demo.gds")

This creates a straight waveguide and writes the result to demo.gds. layout.to_ir() returns the Laylight IR, and layout.write("demo.lyir") writes it to a file that Laylight DSL code can import.

Learn more

For guided examples, API usage, and browser-based experiments, start with the documentation site and the online playground.