Release Notes: Altair Feko 2018.1.1

Altair Feko 2018.1.1 is available with new features, corrections and improvements. This version (2018.1.1) is a patch release and it should be applied to an existing 2018 installation.

Feko 2018.1.1 Release Notes

The most notable extensions and improvements to Feko are listed by component.

CADFEKO

Resolved Issues

  • Upgrading the meshing library to the latest version brings the following improvements:
    • Resolved a crash that occurred when attempting to mesh a parabolic surface with complex cut-outs.
    • Improved meshing of complex periodic surfaces.
    • Meshing is less sensitive to model extents settings and less likely to yield intersecting triangles.
    • Meshing is less likely to yield multiple sliver triangles around curvature.

POSTFEKO

Resolved Issues

  • Corrected the parameter sweep plugin handling of continuous axis data sampling (frequency and far field). The specified number of samples are now taken into account.
  • Corrected a problem with the visualisation of wire currents in the 3D view. The bug could have resulted in wire currents not being displayed on the wires when zooming out the display.

Solver

Features

  • Support power scaling for FEM line current sources.
  • Achieved further memory savings by expanding shared memory usage to other phases. By using shared memory for the Legendre polynomial, memory savings are seen for models with large far field requests that are solved with MLFMM using many cores.
  • Improved text output given when rays are discarded during RL-GO calculation.
  • Improved the percentage progress output during the geometrical processing phase.

Resolved Issues

  • Improved efficient calculation of triangle integrals for FEM/MoM interfaces.
  • Improved the passivity checks for anisotropic 3D material by making it more tolerant to numerical uncertainty and inaccuracies.
  • Corrected a problem where rays were not exported for RL-GO simulations that utilise the GPU.
  • Fixed a bug that caused an error state when there is not enough space available on temporary storage devices during MLFMM runs.
  • Fixed a bug that caused and internal error condition when running MoM PBC examples that contain SEP regions together with waveguide ports.
  • Fixed a bug that caused an internal error for PBC problems where dielectrics are entirely enclosed in metal.
  • Support MPI-3 shared memory on HPE-MPT (formally SGI-MPT) systems.
  • Fixed a bug that caused an internal error state after Feko is done with a simulation.
  • Significantly improved MoM matrix element calculation when the volume equivalence principle is used.
  • Corrected an error in the logic to read and write the .lud file for models with multiple configurations.
  • Issue an explicit error when PO is used with curvilinear triangles.
  • Improved the cleanup process of temporary files for simulations running on multiple hosts by cleaning up on all hosts and not just the master.
  • Relaxed the tolerance used to determine if a curvilinear triangle is lying vertically (normal to the XY plane).
  • Improved the output message when intersecting elements are found.
  • Refined tolerances used for various geometry checks.
  • Improved the text for note 33644. The note now reads: “Single frequency inside a loop over angles of plane wave incidence will terminate the loop over angles due to backwards compatibility reasons and processing continues”.

Support Components

Features

  • Nastran mesh files with missing coordinate information resulted in an error, but will now rather produce a warning and continue with the import assuming the default coordinate system.

Resolved Issues

  • Improved handling of MS-MPI command line options.
  • The output file of a continuous frequency simulation interrupted by the user only contained converged data. The discrete data are now written irrespective of the convergence status so that users have access to the simulation results that have completed.
  • Corrected a problem that could have resulted in the Feko Terminal window not displaying the correct version in the window title.
  • Improved ADAPTFEKO argument handling to make it more robust with respect to the order of arguments.
  • Corrected a problem with generating .fek file format 161 files with a PREFEKO that generates format 162 by default.

WinProp 2018.1.1 Release Notes

The most notable extensions and improvements to WinProp are listed by component.

General

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a license problem encountered with OptMan.

ProMan

Features

  • Enhanced the command line options.
    • The -a option runs all computations that have been defined (RunPro, RunMS and RunNet):

      ProMan.exe "C:\SampleProject.net" -a

    • Added a new -m option that launches RunMS:

      ProMan.exe "C:\SampleProject.net" -m

  • Added a new solution method for rural scenarios, namely the Rural Ray Tracing (RRT) method. Usually, in rural scenarios, the topography is described by pixels, and solution methods are limited to empirical methods and the dominant path method (DPM). In WallMan, pixel-based topography data can be converted to a geometry described by triangles. A building database can be added during this conversion. Then, in ProMan, deterministic ray tracing is possible. Two methods are available for rural topographies described by triangles: RRT, which operates in the vertical plane, and 3D ray tracing. RRT has the advantage of speed over 3D ray tracing.
  • The maximum number of parallel threads within one machine is increased to 256.

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a bug that caused wrong results for the dominant path model (DPM) in combined network planning (CNP) mode (hybrid urban/indoor) with automatic floor management. Transmission losses through floors were not always taken into account correctly.
  • Fixed a licence problem with UWB network planning projects.
  • Fixed a regression that prevented the display of indoor results in hybrid urban-indoor (CNP) scenarios.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred in ProMan when viewing a particular result (number of streams in Network Planning) in one of the example projects.
  • For ray tracing over topo triangles, the GUI has been made more user friendly. Absolute height can now be defined for Tx in addition to height above local ground; the maximum size for scatter tiles has been increased (important in large scenarios), and several display inconveniences have been taken care of.
  • Fixed a regression in which newly-created polygons with the Paint tool could not be closed.
  • Reduced the memory requirements of simulations that combine a large pre-processed geometry database with a measurement-based calibration file.
  • Re-enabled the option to display rays inside the indoor part of a combined network planning (CNP) (hybrid urban/indoor) project.
  • Fixed a bug in reading the header of the ray file in a solved model with components.
  • Fixed a problem that could cause rays in rural scenarios with the dominant path model (DPM) to appear as if they cross through the topology. This behaviour was caused by adaptive resolution management and subsequent interpolation. Propagation results for received power were still correct.
  • Fixed a post-processing setting (to fill in pixels that were not computed by IRT) for urban IRT simulations. Slight differences could be observed in results for filled in pixels, depending on whether indoor penetration was active.
  • Fixed a bug in which the ZIP archive for a project would not include the .emc file (in the relatively rare case that there was one).
  • In one of the example models (CampusCNP_IRT), ProMan would hang when the user selected the received power to be displayed. This is fixed.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when combining an urban intelligent ray tracing (IRT) model with a calibration file.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred in results display in one of the example models (Car2Car Sample).
  • Fixed a crash that could occur during an urban intelligent ray tracing (IRT) simulation if the user cancelled a simulation in progress.

WallMan

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a regression in the topo converter for MSI Planet.

AMan

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed one bug that prevented .ffe files (far field patterns) produced by AMan to be used in Feko. Those files would already work correctly in ProMan.

Application Programming Interface

Resolved Issues

  • Added a missing license check-in during execution of the API. The missing check-in could result in two licenses being checked out.