Wavenology IDE, the integrated design environment is responsible for interactions between the user and the software package. It supports the following functionalities and services.
- Provides dialogs for the user to input necessary problem parameters
- Organizes project components with a tree control. Project components include all the information to define a simulation problem, and intermediate and final results
- Renders the project geometry in 3D view in the main canvas
- Renders the simulation results in 2D or 3D graphics depending on the properties of the results
- Creates and sends the command to edit the project
- Starts and stops a simulation
- Opens, saves, and saves as the project and results to a file
Wavenology allows users to build complicated geometries and perform advanced geometrical operations. Users can add, subtract, stretch and otherwise change the mesh to their desire. Models can be dynamically viewed from a variety of angles. Models can also be rotated and the view can be zoomed in and out. Fig. 1 shows several example objects that are created by Wavenology.
To enlarge the flexibility of model construction, Wavenology can export their models to files, which are compatible to other applications such as AutoCAD. The modeler can also import external models into Wavenology’s design environment. Several selected features of Wavenology modeler are listed below.
- Boolean operations on solids.
- CAD model export / import
- Transforms 3D shapes. Various 3D operations include translation, mirror, rotation, scale, intersection, union, etc.
- 2D and 3D lines and curves.
- Support covering coplanar and closed lines and curves as faces.
- Sweeping faces along 2D or 3D lines and curves
- Multiple mesh control options, such as tessellating surface geometry into triangular mesh representation.
- Provides batch creation capabilities.
- Provides query geometry information.
Fig. 1. Example objects created by Wavenology.
To further demonstrate the abilities of Wavenology modeler, two important geometry functionalities have been added in our software. One is the import and export of geometries with some standard CAD formats including SAT, IGES and STEP. The other is the tetrahedron mesh generation.
Import and Export of CAD Formats
Wavenology supports many of existing CAD data formats, such as the IGES, STEP and SAT formats. In Fig. 2 and 3, several examples are used to verify the import of geometries through Wavenology.
Fig 2. Imported IGES data in Wavenology.
Fig. 3. Imported STEP data in Wavenology.
3D Unstructured Mesh Generation
Wavenology can generate 3D mesh. Particularly, it can generate tetrahedral meshes. The input for 3D problems is either defined by constructive solid geometries (CSG) or by the standard STL file format. In addition, the connection to a geometry kernel allows the handling of IGES or STEP files that are standard exchange formats for CAD files. Fig. 4 shows two examples of the meshed objects in Wavenology.
Fig. 4. 3D unstructured tetrahedral meshes generated by Wavenology.
Simulation Management
Wavenology IDE can perform multiple simulations in batch mode. The simulation setup is also very straight forward. Users can setup the simulation in minutes and start the run. The design of the simulation setup process has two major modes. One is the automatic mode, which is very user friendly, and aims to hide as much of the simulation setups as possible. It only asks users very basic goals and inputs, and will automatically and smartly determine the simulation parameters for the user, such as time steps, mesh densities, stop time and so on. If the user has advanced requirements and customized configurations with the simulation projects, the simulation manager can also provide detailed and advanced options. Fig. 5 shows the general layout of Wavenology simulation setup environment and Fig. 6 shows a typical setup dialog for circuit component configuration.
Fig. 5. General layout for a simulation setup.
Fig. 6. Example dialog for circuit component configuration.
Wavenology IDE can help the user easily investigate into the simulated results. This includes scattering parameters, port current and voltages in both time- and frequency- domains, snapshots of field distributions, far-field pattern and many other easy-to-use features. Fig. 7 provides a brief introduction of Wavenology IDE layout for result exploration and Fig. 8 shows several example simulated results visualized by Wavenology.
- Full 3D output of electric and magnetic fields at any location.
- Both transient and frequency-domain snapshots in volumes and surfaces
- Transient waveforms and frequency-domain impulse responses at observation points.
- Far-field calculation at multiple frequencies, along any directions, at any distances
- Far field time-domain waveform
- Output files compatible with Matlab.
- Wave port mode and characteristic impedance calculation.
- S-parameter matrix and Y and Z matrices.
Fig. 7. Introduction of the Wavenology IDE for result exploration.
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Fig. 8. Some example of simulated results. (a) Far-field plot of the scattering of an aircraft. (b) Surface current on a tank. (c) RCS. (d) Transient signal. (e) S-parameters?
