Lumerical-OptoCompiler EPDA environment setup for photonic component design

Ansys Lumerical products offers the ability to seamlessly integrate with the Synopsys OptoCompiler™ software to address complex challenges for photonic component design. For further information on the workflows, see the Lumerical-OptoCompiler integration landing page.

Prior to using the integrated photonic component design workflows, you must first setup the Lumerical-OptoCompiler electronic-photonic design automation (EPDA) environment, which allows the two software to interface with each other.

Requirements

Operating system

The integrated functionalities must run on a supported Linux operating system. These functionalities are not available on Windows.

The following pages provides information on supported operating systems:

License

Lumerical license: A valid Lumerical Business (Standard) license for the product you wish to import the layout into (Ansys Lumerical FDTD™, Ansys Lumerical MODE™, Ansys Lumerical Multiphysics™), or an Enterprise license.
OptoCompiler license: The I541-0 OptoCompiler Base license.

Product version

Ensure that you meet the following product version requirements:

Ansys Lumerical release 2026 R1 or newer
Synopsys tools release 2026.03 or newer

Environment setup

You must run the following bash scripts to add the main paths and home and custom paths scripts to enable integrated functionalities, replace each variable with your own directories using the definitions in the table below. Ensure that you add the paths in the order given below.

Note: The setup process below only temporarily modifies the PATH variable. To add it permanently, add the paths below to your .bashrc file or equivalent.

Variable	Definition
<Ansys_Lumerical_installation_directory>	Installation directory of Lumerical tools.
<Synopsys_PrimeWave_installation_directory>	Installation directory of PrimeWave software.
<Synopsys_OptoCompiler_installation_directory>	Installation directory of OptoCompiler software.
<Synopsys_CustomCompiler_installation_directory>	Installation directory of CustomCompiler software.

Step 1 - Main paths

export PATH
PATH=<Ansys_Lumerical_installation_directory>/bin:$PATH
PATH=<Ansys_Lumerical_installation_directory>/python-3.13.1/bin:$PATH
PATH=<Ansys_Lumerical_installation_directory>/CML_Compiler/bin/:$PATH
PATH=<Synopsys_PrimeWave_installation_directory>/bin:$PATH
PATH=<Synopsys_OptoCompiler_installation_directory>/bin:$PATH
PATH=<Synopsys_OptoCompiler_installation_directory>/optodesigner/bin:$PATH
PATH=<Synopsys_CustomCompiler_installation_directory>/bin:$PATH

Step 2 - Home and custom photonics environment variables

export LUMERICAL_HOME=<Ansys_Lumerical_installation_directory>/