lumerical-functions-lib

A library of helpful functions for Lumerical scripting (.lsf) files

Importing the _MODE or _DEVICE library (respectively for Ansys Lumerical Mode or Device) will also import the _general library.

Examples of usage are:

• print2(my_cell); actually prints the contents of a cell, unlike print(my_cell)
• plotmodeE2 plots (and saves) E2 of a given mode
• all_overlaps(ref_mode) calculates field overlaps of all modes with a given reference mode on the d_card
• integrate_E(mode_n, x0, x1, y0, y1) integrates the E-field for a given rectangle [[x0,y0],[x1,y1]].

Motivation

There's no sugar coating it, the in-built Lumerical scripting language lacks in every way imaginable. Example 1:

x = {"TE0","TE1"};
print(x); # built-in function
-----> Cell array with 2 elements

Instead we can use:

print2(x); # function from this library
----->
      TE0
      TE1

Example 2:

?getresult; # print out the possible outputs of the 'getresult' built-in function
----->
FDE::data::material
FDE::data::mode1
FDE::data::mode2
FDE::data::mode3

Now, what on Earth is the data we have obtained? Is it a cell (array) that we can loop over to subsequently extract data for each mode? No. Is it a string with a new-line character (endl) separating the modes? Yes. Why? Only God knows. Is this Documented in Lumerical documentation? Absolutely not.

So if we try:

results_found = getresult;
for (result = results_found) {
    ?result;   
}

the output is -----> Error: Argument of for loop must be a matrix or a cell

Consider this for debugging:

results_found = getresult; 
?getdtype(results_found);
-----> str

Now we know it's a string, and can adapt accordingly:

results_cell = splitstring(results_found, endl);
for (result = results_cell) {
    ?result;   
}

which works correctly.

Launch

Import to your .lsf file via:

addpath("C:\Users\path_to_lib..\lumerical-functions-lib);
function_lib_MODE;

See inline comments for functions.