Once the stick diagram of the circuit is created, making the layout is reasonably simple. It's almost like just making a really thick stick diagram. The diffusions, poly (used for the gate of each transistor), and metal used to inter connect, everything all has a width. Drawing layout is just adding this to the general plan on the stick diagram.

This example is a very basic layout. All layouts have design rules, because the machines used to make the physical circuits on the silicon do have limits. If something is drawn too small, the machine will not be able to make it, or make it wrong. These rules are important to a layout designer. However, this example will not use any specific rules.

      VCC
       |  |
       |  |
   P --x-----x--
          |  |
          |  |__ B
          |  |
   N --x-----x--
       |  |
       |  |

      VSS A

The layout for an inverter is simply a thick stick diagram.

    |VCC| _
    |"""||.|_____
   ||"""||.| ___ |
   ||"""||.||"""||
   ||"X"||.||"X"||
   ||___||.||"""||
   |_____|.||"""||
       __|.||"""|
  ____|___.||"""|
  """"""""|||"""|
  A"""""X"|||"B"|
  ________|||"""|
      |__..||"""|
    _____|.||"""|
   | ___ |.||"""||
   ||"""||.||"""||
   ||"X"||.||"X"||
   ||"""||.||___||
   ||"""||.|_____|
    |"""||_|
    |VSS|

That is the basic layout of an inverter. The shapes filled with the " mark are metals, while the . represents the poly. The X represents a contact, that connects metal to either poly or diffusion. The diffusion above is P (for P-FETS), and the bottom is N (for N-FETS). The layout looks just like the stick diagram, just thicker.