A photonic design automation (PDA) tool to facilitate design of semiconductor photonic devices is described. In one example, the PDA tool includes a process design library including one or more photonics parameterized cells (pCells), a plurality of processor-executable photonics design functions including a design rule check (DRC) violation removal function, and a semiconductor technology-dependent parameter file including a plurality of design rules that define allowed semiconductor design patterns to be converted to a plurality of semiconductor fabrication mask designs in a first semiconductor technology. The PDA tool supports a graphical user interface (GUI) to provide access to the library of photonic pCells to create intuitive physical property layers for a photonic device, and processes the physical property layers using the DRC violation removal function and the design rules to automatically generate a plurality of mask design layers for a “DRC clean” physical layout of the photonics device.