Flatten

When a cell is “flattened”, all child cells are resolved and the shapes are propagated into the parent cell. See flatten documentation for details about this feature.

Note: this operation is potentially expensive. Depending on the hierarchical organization, this may create a large number of shapes even from few cells.

Code:

import klayout.db as db
import math

ly = db.Layout()
ly.read("nuts_and_bolts.gds")

# arguments are: levels (-1: all), remove orphan cells
ly.top_cell().flatten(-1, True)

ly.write("flatten.gds")

Input nuts_and_bolts.gds:

Download GDS

Result (looks the same, but actually is flat):

Download GDS