Patent ID: 8723136

Claim:
A method of operating a particle beam system, the method comprising: determining at least one deflection amount and at least one deflection time at which a first beam deflection module of the particle beam system connected to a data network of the particle beam system is to provide the at least one deflection to a charged particle beam corresponding to the at least one deflection amount; determining an un-blank time at which a beam blanking module of the particle beam system connected to the data network is to un-blank the beam; determining a blank time at which the beam blanking module connected to the data network is to blank the beam; generating a data structure comprising a plurality of data records, each data record comprising a command representing an instruction for at least one of the first beam deflection module and the beam blanking module, each data record further comprising a command time representing a time at which the instruction is to be sent to the data network; sorting the data records by command time; generating a set of digital commands based on the data structure, one digital command being generated for each one of the data records; and sending the set of digital commands to the network in an order corresponding to an order of the sorted records, wherein: at least one digital command of the set of digital commands represents an instruction for the first beam deflection module to deflect the beam corresponding to the at least one deflection amount; at least one digital command of the set of digital commands represents an instruction for the beam blanking module to un-blank the beam; and at least one digital command of the set of digital commands represents an instruction for the beam blanking module to blank the beam.