Eight years ago, I was seeing if I could get matplotlib to work in KLayout. I tried today and it seems to work quite well on Mac OSX, and I was able to generate simple plots.

I was able to even install Flex Compute's Tidy3D simulator within the HW KLayout build and have the plots generate within KLayout.

My approach for installing packages is to do it within the KLayout IDE Python using the pip module:

import pip
pip.main(['install', 'matplotlib'])
pip.main(['install', 'tidy3d'])

Problems encountered:

1. On Mac OSX, it causes a KLayout crash if I close the windows.
2. On both Windows and Linux (Ubunto 22) KLayout froze (I waited for 30 minutes), so that didn't work.

I suspect the OSX version is using the MacOSX backend. Perhaps it would be better to use the Qt backend?

@thomaslima, perhaps you have already experience with this?

It would be nice to be able to create Qt dialogs in KLayout with plots.

For example, it could be used to help designers choose parameters from a PCell or display other technology information. And even display some simulation results.

@momchil-flex, @tomflexcompute, I would like to make it easy for students to use tidy3d in the edX Phot1x course. I'm curious what you think.

Thank you
Lukas