Enhancements to ANSYS HFSS promote streamlined electromagnetic simulation

Thursday, May 30, 2013: As electronics products become smaller and more functional, the need to include efficient electromagnetic analysis within traditional electronic design has increased dramatically. To address these issues, ANSYS (NASDAQ: ANSS) recently updated its tool for simulating 3D full-wave electromagnetic fields, HFSS, to include a 3D electrical layout interface as well as a planar Method of Moments (MoM) solver for a more accurate and streamlined design workflow.

In addition to the traditional 3D modeler interface, the new 3D electrical layout interface for ANSYS HFSS version 14.5 service pack 2 is a significant usability enhancement for designers of high-performance electronic devices. The update enables engineers to quickly and easily create sophisticated electromagnetic simulations using an intuitive layout interface and achieve reliable, accurate and high-fidelity results from the HFSS solver. The 3D electrical layout interface also enables more efficient integration with established EDA design flows as well as the direct import of layout geometry from ODB++ compatible databases such as Altium, Cadence, Mentor Graphics and Zuken™.

The new planar MoM solver gives users the ability to quickly perform complex calculations and explore many design alternatives early in the design cycle while still being able to take advantage of HFSS’ robust analysis capabilities to optimize and verify the design later in the process. Automatic set up of port assignment, radiation boundary conditions and layered material properties functionalities further simplify the model creation process and allows users to easily create designs of their electronic products with fully parametric planar stackups, via padstacks and transmissions lines, as well as other types of planar structures and transitions.

“HFSS is a very powerful and valuable tool in my signal integrity simulation tool suite,” said Steve Zinck, president of Interconnect Engineering. “The tool is capable of extracting just about any feature that is pertinent to high-speed signal integrity analysis. Now with the 3D electrical layout interface in addition to the 3D modeler, it is even easier for my customers to produce extremely robust designs.”

“The new 3D electrical layout interface for ANSYS HFSS allows users to easily create fully parametric designs of printed circuit boards, electronic packages and custom integrated circuits from an intuitive interface,” said Larry Williams, director of product management at ANSYS. “This new capability greatly simplifies the model creation process and allows a broad class of engineers to leverage the HFSS solver to extract electromagnetic parameters from critical signal pathways and to explore design alternatives and evaluate design trade-offs prior to fabrication.”

ANSYS HFSS users can download the new version from the ANSYS customer portal.