This tutorial introduces MicroStripes 7.5. By following the step by step
guide below, you will walk through the key features of the product and learn a typical modeling process. You will: • Create a new project and build a model. • Analyze the model. • Display various types of results for the model.
or by clicking on the MicroStripes 7.5 desktop icon. Every time you start MicroStripes, the Starting MicroStripes dialog is displayed. This dialog helps you create a new project or open a recently used project. We will create a new project, so click on the New project… button.
new project ‘Getting Started’, so type this in the Name area. By default, the project location will be in the user’s My Documents\MicroStripes Projects directory. You can change project location by using the Browse… button. We are going to create a new model for this project. Check the Create new SAT file box and in the File Name area type in ‘cavity’. SAT is the name of the file format used to store models. Click on OK to create the project and to close the New Project dialog.
model, the MicroStripes 7.5 Build window automatically opens. Build is an interactive CAD modeler that is used to create and edit geometric and electromagnetic properties of the model. The Build window has a main drawing area for displaying the model, a menu bar for performing various tasks, and a set of toolbars for quick access to specific operations. You can move the toolbars around to create a different look and feel. To move a Build toolbar, click on any part of the toolbar around the icons, and drag the toolbar to your preferred position. Toolbars can be positioned at the top or to either side of Build.
Click on in the View toolbar to toggle
between black and white background; or choose Options>Background Color… from the main menu and select any other color.
box. We will create it using solid blocks primitives and a simple Boolean operation. Generally, a solid shape can be created by selecting it from the Create>Solids menu, or by clicking on an icon in the Solids toolbar (identified by its red icons).
Click on the Block icon in the Solids
toolbar. The Create block dialog will open. Type ‘cavity’ in the Name box. Set the Corner Point to (-2, -2, -2), and the dimensions of the block to (24, 14, 20). You can use the <Tab> key to quickly move through the edit boxes. Click the Create button. Now create a second, smaller block, using the same dialog. Change name to ‘cutout’ and choose a different color by clicking on the colored rectangle next to the name. Set the Corner Point to (0, 0, 0) and the dimensions to (20, 10, 16). Click the Create button followed by Close.
Click twice on the Mode icon in the View
toolbar to change the image rendering to the “wireframe” display. Use the mouse wheel to make the model larger on the screen. Press the left mouse button and move the mouse to rotate the view.
Click on the Zoom All icon in the View
toolbar to reset the view so that the image of the model is contained within the drawing area.
inside the other. In order to create a hollow cavity, we will use a Boolean operation to cut the small block out of the larger block.
Click on the Booleans icon in the
Operations toolbar. The Boolean operations dialog opens. For the Workpiece select the item ‘cavity’. For the Operation, choose ‘Subtract’. For the Tool select ‘cutout’. You do not need to keep the ‘cutout’ block after this operation, so leave Keep tool unchecked. Click Apply and then Close to exit the Boolean operations dialog. As in the previous step, use the mouse wheel and mouse buttons to manipulate the view of the model. Note that by pressing the mouse wheel you can drag the view from side to side or up and down.
complete. The next step is to set the electromagnetic properties of the model. This can be achieved using the EM Properties menu or icons in the EM Properties toolbar. In this tutorial we will use the icons.
Click on to open the Model Parameters
dialog. For the Data ID type ‘resonant cavity’. This is effectively a title that will be used in the result plots. Leave the Units as mm. Set Maximum frequency to 30 GHz. The minimum and maximum frequencies are used to calculate the default mesh size and to set default range for plotting results. Leave the Duration as 480 mm. This determines the amount of real time that the model will be analyzed for and defaults to 20 times the size of the model. The solver will run for the time necessary for an electromagnetic signal to travel 480 mm. Click OK.
Under the Metal tab, select the material ‘Cu’ (copper) from the list of predefined materials. In Entity list at the bottom of the window, select ‘cavity’ and then click on the Attach material button. This operation attaches the copper material definition to the cavity. Close this window.
electromagnetic field excitation for our model. In this example we will use the initial field excitation, which defines electromagnetic field conditions at the start of the simulation.
Click on to open the Excitations dialog. At
the bottom of the window, click on Create… and select Initial field. The Initial field dialog opens. We will define the excitation region to cover the whole of the internal cavity. In the Initial field dialog set Minimum to (0, 0, 0) and Maximum to (20, 10, 16). We will excite the y-polarized field. To do so set the initial electric field magnitude to (0, 1, 0). Hit OK in the Initial field dialog and then close the Excitations window.
like to obtain in this simulation. First, we will request Ey field component output at a point in the centre of the cavity. Note that this is a broadband output – both the time and frequency domain results (within the defined frequency range) will be available.
Click on to open the Outputs dialog. The
Points page will be displayed by default. In the Edit set area, set Position to (10, 5, 8). Check Ey for Electric field component. In the Comment box type ‘inside cavity’. Click on Insert to add this output definition to the output point list.
region for the output at selected frequencies. These frequencies are normally obtained by running an initial analysis and recording “interesting” frequencies from the broadband results at a point. In this tutorial, we will cheat and set the three interesting frequencies for the space domain output upfront. Click on the Regions (frequency) tab of the Outputs window. Enter 12 GHz in the Frequencies area and click on the Insert button to add it to the list. Repeat the same steps to insert 24.3 GHz and 29 GHz into the list of frequencies. In the Fields area, tick Electric field and Magnetic field to obtain field values at these frequencies. In the Currents area tick Surface and wire current to obtain surface current results at these frequencies. Close the Outputs window.
of the model is now completed. We will proceed with the discretization of the model using a default mesh.
Click on to open the Discretize model
dialog. Click the Go button. Wait until the discretization is completed and click on Close. The discretization process automatically saves the model. Select File>Exit to close the Build tool.
display the results in the main MicroStripes window. The Projects tree displays the list of currently opened projects and models, and will show what type of results (targets) can be analyzed and displayed for each model. In this example, we can see our ‘Getting Started’ project, containing a single model called ‘cavity’. Expand the tree under ‘cavity’ and double-click on the Frequency Domain target. The required analysis tools will be started. After the completion of the analysis, the broadband frequency domain results at our output point will be displayed. In the graph plot, you can see the resonant frequencies of the cavity. Move your mouse over the peaks to confirm that the cavity is resonating around the frequencies selected for the space domain output. You can place frequency markers on the graph by clicking on it with the mouse. By default the marker is placed at the nearest maximum or minimum of the plotted quantity. You can also double-click on Time domain target in the Project tree and observe how the time-domain signal has been excited and how it resonates inside the low loss cavity.
output frequencies that we requested. In the Projects tree, expand the Space Domain target and double click on Frequency 24.3 GHz to check the results at this frequency. The surface currents in the cavity will be displayed.
Click on to turn on the smooth shading.
With the icon selected to the right of the
field plot, try rotating the plot by dragging the mouse cursor around the plot.
view settings for the field plot. On the Surface Field page, change the Color map to ‘Grey Scale’. Click on the Space Field tab. In the Planes/Positions area tick ‘Y’ to obtain the y-plane plot of the electric field and move the adjacent slide bar to about half way through the range. In the Colors section change Scale to ‘Linear’. In the Glyphs section change Type to ‘Cones’.
Click on in the toolbar to turn off the axis
display. You are now looking at the resonant behavior of the electric field in this cavity at 24.3GHz.
Try clicking on to animate the phase. To
stop the animation click on the Stop icon . You can repeat this procedure for any other space domain frequencies specified. Finally, select File>Exit to exit MicroStripes. The project will automatically be saved on exit. This concludes the first tutorial. The subsequent tutorials will show you how to find scattering parameters, as well as introducing some of the more advanced features of MicroStripes.