Release Notes: Altair Feko 2018.0.2

Altair Feko 2018.0.2 is available with new features, corrections and improvements. This version (2018.0.2) is a patch release and it should be applied to an existing 2018 installation.

Feko 2018.0.2 Release Notes

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

CADFEKO

Resolved Issues

  • The thickness of metal faces gets imported from .fek files.
  • Ports are no longer removed when merging meshes.
  • Some problematic CAD faces could have resulted in an assertion failure with the message “!errorInfo.needsRollback()” when snapping in the 3D view or querying the centre of gravity of such a face through the API. The 3D view is now functional even when such faces are present, and an error gets issued in the scripting environment when it is not possible to calculate the centre of gravity.
  • Resolved an issue that prevented changing the face solution properties of a face labelled “Face0”. The problem presented when creating a cone or flare primitive with the top dimension set to zero and then modifying this dimension to be non-zero.
  • A problem is fixed that caused an assertion to fail with “Current active state widget SpecifyPointsImportPointsButton doesn't have focus and should be visible” when pressing Tab or Shift+Tab repeatedly on certain dialogs, such as the Create dielectric medium dialog.
  • Inactive waveguide ports were handled incorrectly for S-parameter configurations, causing Warning 33046: Possibly wrong use of the specification "additional" for a source, please verify active sources during simulation. This is corrected.
  • Meshing a model directly after excluding or including a configuration takes all included configurations into account with immediate effect. Before, it was required to mesh a second time or to make other changes to the model before the settings took effect.
  • Prevented an assertion failure with the message “simulationMeshCollector.getGraphNodes().size() == 1”. Upon opening a model that issues Warning 16889: GeometryPart has more than one linked mesh. This can cause problems and/or the application to close unexpectedly., all but one of the linked meshes are now deleted to prevent further problems.
  • Resolved a crash and assertion failure with message “m_modelBoxDiagonal > 0.0” that could occur when meshing some models.
  • A model saved with no 3D view would open with the default 3D view of the model. It now re-opens as it was saved, without a 3D view open. Closing the 3D view provides an alternative to hiding elements from the view for improved performance when working with complex models.
  • Improved the intersecting triangle algorithm.
  • Selecting an individual segment highlighted the whole wire in the 3D view. Highlighting is corrected for the selection of individual segments when using wire display with surface display disabled.
  • The region, face or edge properties of a geometry part opened and applied without changes resulted in the removal of the mesh and printed the message Changed settings for geometry entities to the message window. Macro recording recorded this action as a comment. Applying no changes no longer removes the mesh or prints out these messages.
  • Suppressed a Parasolid error that caused a geometry modeller problem during meshing or an assertion failure when meshing with the FDTD solver active.

EDITFEKO

Resolved Issues

  • Resolved a crash that could occur when entering text in the search bar and pressing a modifier key like Ctrl.

POSTFEKO

Resolved Issues

  • Improved the placement of cursor text boxes on 2D graphs to avoid overlap and to remain visible inside the graph area.
  • Resolved an assertion failure in “DataSetExporter” that were triggered when reading fields through scripting if a plane wave source was set to calculate the orthogonal polarisations.
  • The result for the orthogonal polarisation of a single incident plane wave is now available. This result was unavailable for a far field result calculated in the plane wave incident direction when the plane wave set to Calculate orthogonal polarisations was defined in a single direction only.
  • Fixed an assertion failure that terminated the application with “Assertion failed: Manager was never set, i.e. nothing was assigned to: Position” when storing combined receiving antenna data.
  • A problem is fixed that caused an assertion to fail with “Current active state widget SpecifyPointsImportPointsButton doesn't have focus and should be visible” when pressing Tab or Shift+Tab repeatedly on certain dialogs, such as the Create time signal dialog.

Solver

Resolved Issues

  • Improved insufficient memory allocation errors reported by external libraries.
  • Introduced an error to prevent the simulation of any cable path terminated by a load, source or interconnect connection onto itself.
  • Fixed a bug that caused certain cable problems solved in parallel using the combined MoM/MTL method to end in the error state 52695.
  • Fixed a bug that caused incorrect receive power to be reported when a highly directional receive antenna is modelled using spherical modes and rotated within the model.
  • Improved the stability of triangle intersection checks for triangles that touch at a single point.
  • Fixed a bug that caused an internal error state to be issued during geometry checking for CFIE models where the surface touches itself on an edge.
  • Fixed a bug that caused very large symmetrical MoM problems to appear to hang when solved in parallel.
  • Fixed a bug that caused a parallel deadlock for models that contain cable problems and connection points with current sources on MoM problems.
  • Fixed a sporadic floating point error when calculating the ACA H-matrix.
  • Fixed a bug that caused closed CFIE geometries with internal surfaces touching on edges only to report an error.

Support Components

Resolved Issues

  • The model for example D02 (Calculating Field Coupling into a Shielded Cable) is corrected to use local ground connections on the cable schematic to terminate the cable start and end connectors. Simulation of the model issued Warning 38926: A SPICE interconnect circuit applied to a cable harness has connectors separated by more than 5% of the total harness length. The simulation results were correct in this case, but it is not generally advised to set up a model in this way. Error 52712: A cable path should not be terminated by a load/source/interconnect connection onto itself is now issued when cable connectors are connected through the global ground.

WinProp 2018.0.2 Release Notes

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

ProMan

Features

  • The polarimetric analysis capability has been completed. This new capability, which one selects at the beginning of a new project, is available for indoor and urban scenarios. It requires an antenna pattern from Feko in .ffe format, since this format contains all field components for every individual direction. For simulation, standard ray tracing or intelligent ray tracing, with the use of Fresnel/UTD coefficients, is recommended. The standard (non-polarimetric) capability can be selected for any scenario and any simulation method at the beginning of a project. It should be mentioned that one can always use Feko antenna patterns in .ffe format. However, in the standard work flow, no attempt is made to extract polarization-specific information from the antenna pattern, as for many permitted formats this is simply not part of the file. In the standard work flow, one can still specify the predominant antenna polarization and the cross-polarization level, both for transmitting and receiving antennas. The difference is that such polarization information in the standard analysis applies to all directions in the antenna pattern.

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a bug that resulted, for selected indoor scenarios, in longer simulation times in version 2018.0.1.
  • Fixed a bug where ProMan was using incorrect information from an antenna pattern in Feko .ffe format when it was used in a non-polarimetric (standard) analysis. ProMan was using the vertically polarized fields instead of the total fields in that particular case.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur in MIMO post processing due to a bug in the computation of the condition number.
  • Fixed a crash that could be triggered by an unusual sequence of user actions.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when using the "Additional Data" menu with a topological database loaded.

WallMan

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed a crash that could occur when pre-processing of a database was cancelled.
  • Fixed a bug related to DWG/DXF import of 2D CAD data. A window that enables the user to define wall height (used by WallMan to extrude the 2D data) did not appear.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred during pre-processing of a particular database.
  • Modified a default setting. During pre-processing, by default adaptive resolution management used to be activated. As a consequence, in ProMan during RunMS, for some pixels no results might be computed, which would raise concerns. With the new default setting, one always obtains results for all pixels.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur during pre-processing of an urban database.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause a “read access violation” when the user pressed the Cancel button during pre-processing.
  • Fixed a bug that limited WallMan's pre-processing to one database. To handle a second database, one needed to start a new instance of WallMan.

Application Programming Interface

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed an “access violation” in the WinProp API.