In the "File" menu, choose

• "Open" to close the current view and open a new layout instead of the currently loaded one
• "Open in Same Panel" to open a new layout in addition to the currently loaded one
• "Open in New Panel" to open a new layout in a new view

Either way, a file selection dialog will appear where a file can be chosen for loading. After choosing the file and clicking "Ok", the file is loaded.

The program will automatically determine the type of the file. Currently, OASIS and GDS2 are supported.

Certain options can be specified for the file loader with the reader option pages. To open the reader options dialog, choose "Reader Options" from the "File" menu. This dialog allows specification of certain options for all "Open" actions, for example:

• Confine the reader to a certain set of layers. All other layers are not read.
• Disable reading of text objects. Disable reading of text objects to reduce the memory consumption if you are interested in pure geometrical information.
• Disable reading of properties. If properties are not required, the memory consumption can be reduced by disabling the properties.
• Certain GDS specific options which mainly control the level of compatibility with other tools.