CLONED AND ORIGINAL CIRCUIT SHAPE MERGING

A method, system and program product for merging cloned and original circuit shapes such that a union thereof does not include a notch. The invention determines, for a cell including an original circuit shape and at least one overlapping clone of the original circuit shape, whether each clone corner point of each overlapping clone is within a threshold distance of a corresponding original corner point of the original circuit shape; and generates, in the case that each clone corner point of each overlapping clone circuit shape is within a threshold distance, a union of each overlapping clone and the original circuit shape such that the union does not contain a notch. The union is generated using a point code that sets a new position for a union corner point to remove a notch based on the original shape's direction and the edge orientations previous to and next to the corner point.