Doing a Digital design using caravel_user_project . I have the following questions 1. Is it required to run precheck before submitting for MPW TWO 2. Appears XOR check (part of pre check) hangs due to the following ERROR . Would be helpful if you have suggestions to fix check/xor.log :

First Layout: /home/s2s-svr1/projects/asic/trial/caravel_user_project/checks/user_project_wrapper_empty_erased.gds

Second Layout: /home/s2s-svr1/projects/asic/trial/caravel_user_project/checks/user_project_wrapper_erased.gds

Design Name: user_project_wrapper

Output GDS will be: /home/s2s-svr1/projects/asic/trial/caravel_user_project/checks/user_project_wrapper.xor.gds

Reading /home/s2s-svr1/projects/asic/trial/caravel_user_project/checks/user_project_wrapper_empty_erased.gds ..

ERROR: In /usr/local/bin/xor_checks/xor.drc: Stream has unknown format: /home/s2s-svr1/projects/asic/trial/caravel_user_project/checks/user_project_wrapper_empty_erased.gds in Layout::read

ERROR: Stream has unknown format: /home/s2s-svr1/projects/asic/trial/caravel_user_project/checks/user_project_wrapper_empty_erased.gds in Layout::read in MacroInterpreter::execute

FYI: I got something like this when I tried to run the prechecks but didn't create the gds first.