Hello All, After I installed magic, skywater-pdk and openpdks, when I open magic with

magic -T sky130A

, many layers and elements are "locked". Why is that so? Please excuse me if I am missing something very simple. I am quite new to magic. Thanks, Booshan.

Several reasons (and none of them "very simple"): One is to prevent the user from drawing on layers that are specific to certain cells---for example, there are layers specific to standard cells and to core SRAM cells that should only be used in the vendor-approved cell libraries, so shouldn't be drawn by the user. The other reason is just to keep the icon list clean of layers that would not likely be used by the end user; for example, various transistor types with threshold shifts, because they are better done using parameterized cell generation, not drawn by hand. However, keeping the icon list clean requires selecting menu item "Options-->Toolbar Hide Locked". The preferred way to start magic is with the command option

magic -rcfile sky130A.magicrc

which sets the abovementioned option but also does a number of other important steps to set the proper environment for doing layout in the Sky130 process, including providing additional menus in the layout window for creating parameterized device layouts. All layers can be accessed for drawing using the command

tech unlock *

.

Thank you!