A system and method for identifying circuit components of an integrated circuit includes a processor identifying geometric characteristics of an integrated circuit and sorting the geometric characteristics by order of occurrence of each geometric characteristic. Co-occurring arrangements of the geometric characteristics are then identified and used to identify a standard cell. The geometric characteristics of the standard cell may then be compared to the geometric characteristics of a known cell. Each electrically significant geometric characteristic of the standard cell can be compared to the electrically significant geometric characteristics of the known cell. If the standard cell matches the known cell an instance of the standard cell can be placed in a layout. Once placing the standard cell in the layout a netlist can be extracted.