Hertzon v0.2.0

Added

• Animations as GIF: Export GIF... in the animation bar (or Fields > Export Animation as GIF...)
  saves all frames of the running animation as a looping GIF. Each frame is the view exactly as shown, in
  its pixel size, and the GIF runs at the speed you see: the bar measures the frames per second actually
  drawn during playback (shown next to the speed setting, it can be lower than the setting for heavy
  plots) and the GIF uses that rate. Without a measurement the export first plays the animation for a
  moment to measure it. All frames share one colour palette, so the colour scale and the field do not
  change colour from frame to frame.
• Object groups: Edit > Group (Ctrl+G) puts the selected objects, also solids, sheets and lines
  together, into one group. A click on a member in the 3D view selects the whole group, so Move, Rotate,
  Mirror, Copy, Hide or Delete act on all of it; the model tree lists the groups under Groups (rename,
  ungroup, single members selectable there). Edit > Ungroup (Ctrl+Shift+G) dissolves a group to edit single
  objects again. Groups are saved in the project. SMD components (C, L, R, Touchstone parts) are inserted as
  a group of pads, terminations and element sheet, and the integration line of a lumped port or element now
  moves with its objects.
• Box selection in the 3D view: a left drag draws a rectangle and selects every object that lies
  completely inside it (in face, edge or vertex mode: every face, edge or vertex completely inside).
  Ctrl + drag adds to the selection. A group is selected only when all its members are inside. Hidden
  objects are skipped; a click still selects one item.
• Mesh refinement "AURA (EMerge)", EMerge's own local refinement, with the same error estimate,
  convergence criterion and curved elements as the other methods. A comparison script measures the time to solution against
  Local (Delaunay) on the benchmark models (examples/benchmark/mesher).
• Lumped Elements tab: inserts a chip resistor, inductor or capacitor, or a component measured by a
  Touchstone file: pick the package in the menu of the button and click the position on the board. The
  part comes with its pads (Perfect E), and its position is the design variables _x/_y/_z, so it
  moves as a whole. With two traces selected it is placed in the gap between them. Packages 0201, 0402, 0603, 0805, 1206 and the RF series
  Coilcraft 0402HP/0402HPH/0402CS/0603HP/0603CS and Murata LQW15AN/LQP03TN/GJM03/GJM15 with their body
  dimensions. Hertzon adds the pads of the land pattern (made like the traces), the element sheet with its
  Lumped RLC boundary and integration line, and optionally a 3D body with metal terminations (the
  mounted inductance from the field solution). The ideal value can carry the typical ESL and ESR of the size.
• Lumped RLC: Model Parallel RLC (as before), Series RLC or Touchstone (.s1p, or .s2p measured in
  series or as a shunt). The Validation Check reads the Touchstone file; the solver warns when a sweep
  leaves its frequency range.
• Draw Integration Line (right click a Lumped Port or Lumped RLC in the project tree): start and end
  point picked with two clicks in the 3D view, with snapping to vertices and edge centers.
  Auto Integration Line places it between the conductors again.

Changed

• Field plot animations compute much faster: a phase animation builds the plot (surfaces, cut planes,
  arrow positions) once and only turns the field for each frame, instead of building the whole plot again.
  On a patch antenna with 54 000 tetrahedra, 18 frames of Mag_E on the patch take 0.15 s instead of 21 s,
  on a cut plane 0.2 s instead of 6 s. Frequency and excitation animations no longer read the field file
  again for every frame, and the mesh faces of a plotted sheet or object are found only once per solution.
• Phase animation default: 35 steps (was 19) from 0 to 360 deg, for a smoother wave.
• Documentation brought up to the current state: the README, the website and the feature overview
  describe AURA as the default refinement, EMerge's curved elements, object groups, box selection,
  coordinate systems, parametric sweeps, plane waves and symmetry planes; docs/MESHER.md covers all
  refinement methods. Primary / Secondary boundaries are marked as not passed to the solver yet.
• Faster 3D view with many objects: the model shows several times faster (300 objects: 1.8 s instead
  of 7.7 s), a click to select, an attribute change and the edge pre-highlight no longer slow down with
  the number of objects (300 objects: select 0.3 s instead of 0.8 s, edge hover 2 ms instead of 0.4 s).
  Several changes in one step now redraw the view once instead of two or three times. The view looks
  and picks exactly as before.
• Assign Material only for solids: greyed out in the ribbon, the Modeler menu and the context menus
  when only sheets or lines are selected (they get a boundary such as Finite Conductivity or Impedance);
  with solids and sheets selected the material goes to the solids. The object properties of sheets and
  lines have no Material row. A material stored on a sheet by an
  older project is kept and, as before, not used by the solve.
• AURA (EMerge) is the default mesh refinement for new setups (was Local (Delaunay)). On the
  benchmark models it reached the convergence criterion in 0.35 to 0.6 times the time in three of four
  cases and was as accurate or more accurate per tetrahedron. Saved setups keep their method; Local (Delaunay) stays selectable.
• EMerge e03a085 (its hertzon branch), which now contains three of Hertzon's speed features: the
  far field of all ports in one pass, the curved elements on curved surfaces and the faster removal of the
  PEC unknowns before each solve. Hertzon uses EMerge's versions and drops its own (about 1200 lines).
  Results and meshes are the same on all benchmark models; far fields of many ports are computed about
  twice as fast, and the one-time compilation of the curved element kernels after an installation
  (about a minute) is gone.
• EMerge 3.0.0b5 plus the fixes on its hertzon branch (commit 2811e9a; was 3.0.0a25, as advised in
  #25). Hertzon now installs EMerge from wheels built from a pinned commit, so solver fixes arrive without
  waiting for a release. Thin conductors with thickness (two-sided Finite Conductivity) are now solved
  with separate fields on both sides of the sheet: filters with such traces show slightly more conductor
  loss (hairpin example: S21 about 0.3 dB lower) and smooth surface currents. Parallel sweeps no longer
  keep the memory of every finished frequency batch. Hertzon's own workarounds for these points, for the
  port mode solve, for conductor sheets in the error estimate (it changed no mesh) and for the welcome
  prompt of the setup are removed. Speed and results were checked
  on the benchmark models (examples/benchmark/tools/emerge_bench.py, docs/EMERGE_INTEGRATION.md).
• Integration line of Lumped Port and Lumped RLC: placed automatically between the two conductors
  that touch the sheet, from the centre of one contact to the centre of the other (conductors: objects of a
  metal material and faces or objects with a Perfect E or Finite Conductivity boundary). A gap longer than
  the traces are wide or a sheet wider than the traces now gets the right line. Without two touching
  conductors the line runs across the shorter side of the sheet as before.

Fixed

• Cut planes no longer show jagged spots at material boundaries and metal sheets: the field is stored per
  element and jumps at a substrate surface, a patch or a ground plane, but the cut plane merged the points of
  both sides and gave each one the value of just one side. Along a patch antenna this drew red sawtooth streaks
  on the patch and at the ground plane. The cut now keeps the elements apart, and the smooth plot averages
  only within one material. The peaks at metal edges and corners stay: they are real.
  A field plot on a drawn plane (a sheet that is not part of the model) is now cut from the solver mesh the
  same way and cropped to the sheet. Before, the field was interpolated onto the sheet's own triangles, which
  cross the material boundaries and drew the same sawtooth there.
• Thicken sheet direction: a positive thickness now always thickens to the positive side of the
  sheet's main axis (+Z for a sheet in XY), a negative one to the other side. Before, the direction followed
  the winding of the outline, so a rectangle dragged to -X or -Y, or a polyline drawn clockwise and covered,
  was thickened to -Z. While the Thicken dialog is open, an arrow on each sheet in the 3D view shows the
  direction, and the new option Reverse direction thickens to the other side.
  Projects saved with an earlier version keep their shape: on loading, Reverse direction is set for the
  sheets that were thickened to the negative side.
• Far fields with symmetry planes: the far field (gain, directivity, pattern, RCS) of a half or quarter
  model now includes the mirror images at Symmetry boundaries (Perfect E or Perfect H, planes parallel to XY,
  YZ or ZX). Before, only the simulated part radiated. Fields and radiated power refer to 1 W into the full
  structure, as in EMerge's farfield(syms=...). Checked with a dipole as full and half model: peak
  directivity 1.645 and 1.650.
• Grid and axes stay at the origin: with the model far from the origin of the working coordinate
  system, the grid now spans from that origin to the model instead of sitting under the model only, and the
  axis triad at the origin is drawn in full. Before, only its X/Y/Z captions were left floating in space.
  The automatic grid spacing grows with a far origin so the grid keeps a bounded number of lines.
• Integration lines follow their object: the current or voltage line of a lumped element or lumped port
  is now given in the coordinates of its sheet as created, so it moves, rotates, mirrors and scales with the
  sheet (Move, Rotate, Mirror, Scale, Orientation), in the 3D view and in the solve. Before, it stayed where
  it was set and a moved component kept its arrow, and its port direction, at the old place. Highlighted
  boundaries and ports are drawn again when the geometry changes. Older projects are converted on loading.
• Split in a Face CS or Object CS: the split plane (XY, YZ, XZ or Custom Base/Normal) is now taken in
  the working coordinate system, stored with the operation as Coordinate system. Before, the plane always
  lay in the Global CS, and an object far from that plane was deleted instead of split. Older projects keep
  splitting in the Global CS.

Windows installer (Hertzon-Setup-*.exe) and Linux package (Hertzon-*-linux.tar.gz).

Hertzon is built on EMerge, the open-source FEM solver by
Robert Fennis, which provides the finite-element core.