October 8, 2025: The content below helps navigate the new features in this release. A full list of updates is available in the Reference Manual's Appendix.
XF 7.11.1 No changes this release, next release: Red Hat 7 will no longer be supported, please contact support if this is a concern.
XAct conformal meshing now supported in waveguides
XFdtd now integrates XACT® Conformal Meshing with the waveguide feature. This enhancement enables highly accurate simulation of waveguides and surrounding parts with curved surfaces. The update extends the support of the Surface Impedance Boundary Condition (SIBC) formulation to waveguide analyses, improving fidelity for complex models. Users can now accurately resolve structures such as circular waveguides and coaxial cables, while also taking advantage of conformal meshing for other curved geometries within the project.
New PCB Importer
The PCB importer has been completely overhauled with a rewritten user interface and import engine. To maximize performance, the new importer is fully multithreaded, allowing it to take advantage of modern multi-core processors. This results in a significantly more efficient and responsive experience, dramatically reducing the time required to import complex printed circuit boards.
Far Zone Calculation and Post-Processing
Significant enhancements have been made to far zone analysis. Key improvements include:
- Independent Sensor Coordinate Systems: Each far zone sensor can now define its own coordinate system, distinct from the global simulation space. This allows for the direct calculation of spherical coordinates oriented to the device's real-world usage while maintaining optimal alignment with the FDTD grid.
- Post-Simulation Phase Referencing: The phase reference point can now be modified after a simulation is complete. This enables the calculation of the phase center via scripting and subsequent analysis without the need to re-run the full-wave simulation.
- Phase Difference Calculation: A new feature allows for computing the phase difference between two antennas or elements across a range of far zone angles or frequencies. This analysis also includes the ability to unwrap the resulting phase for clearer interpretation.
Additional Capabilities
This version introduces over 65 usability, performance, scripting, and other updates.
Here is a select list of modifications:
- Added ability to subsection export of large datasets to MATLAB and CSV.
- Added project properties option to force 1 to 1 component definition ratio via validity.
- Enhanced schematic flat view table with search functionality and column filtering, also applicable to exported CSV files.
- Improved grid info presentation by opening a widget to provide more space for better readability.
- Improved responsiveness of Boolean Operation editing when modifying previous steps after previewing the part.
- Added functionality to save graph bounds.
- Extended mesh touching test to include components.
- Added icon to show unmeshed parts in the project tree.
- Added import and export capabilities for parameter sweeps.
- Added import and export of goals for CEO and schematic.
- Improved consistency of dielectric volume averaging material generation.
- Added two new preferences in the graphs tab of the preferences dialog for line visibility and data point visibility.
- Updated Windows installer to prevent installation on versions earlier than Windows 10.
- Alphabetized parameter order in the simulation summary.
- Fixed issues running large memory GPUs.
- Fixed crash when loading large sensors.
- Fixed UI crashes due to event handling, including issues when changing frequency range of interest, opening schematic scripted subcircuits, or editing expressions.
- Fixed bug that could lead to multiple unintended simulation creation processes due to interface responding at inappropriate times.
- Fixed crash during multi-threaded meshing when viewing mesh or creating simulation.
- Fixed a bug where xfsolver may crash during 'Saving steady state fields for far zone computations' if a large number of MPI ranks are used.
- Fixed a bug which can cause equation-based user-defined waveforms to become invalid when the simulation timestep changes.
- Fixed a rare bug in sinusoidal simulations where convergence may erroneously report -inf instead of 0 very close to the beginning of the simulation, possibly causing the simulation to terminate.
- Fixed a bug where a simulation may give incorrect results or fail to converge if XACT geometry is within one cell of a waveguide.
- Reduced memory used by EdgeRecords in the DielectricBreakdownRegionManager and fixed the accuracy of memory estimation for that sensor in SimulationMemoryEstimator.
- Fixed a bug causing incorrect results when 2nd order CPML boundary conditions are used on XStream runs.
- Fixed a bug causing incorrect results and/or instability on CPU runs when the CPML kappa parameter is set to a value other than 1 inside of a waveguide.
- Fixed license checkout issue for schematics.
- Fixed possible crash when deleting an operating mode in CEO simulation setup that is in use by a tuner component.
- Fixed issue with including schematics in bundle.
- Fixed missing traces in PCB import.
- Updated solder mask and paste layers to import as a single layer part.
- Fixed possible crash when creating a Schematic from CEO Optimized Component Values.
- Fixed bug causing unpredictable crashes after running a macro script.
- Fixed bug where Raw SAR sensor box bounds not obeyed when collecting data.
- Fixed issue where uniformly sampled dimensions subset by a dataset operation would not report as uniformly sampled.
- Fixed typo in error message of DataSet's getFlatIndex.
- Fixed loading of larger results data.
- Fixed bug which may cause a crash on Linux when entering certain types of malformed formula into numeric property editors.
- Updated parameters widget to no longer ask to apply changes if there are no edits to the parameters.
- Fixed graph backgrounds obscured by semi-transparent legend window and legend window gradient issues.
- Improved waveguide eigensolver to attempt to isolate TE and TM modes by default when a set of degenerate modes are found. This will not impact modes that are oriented by an integration line.
- Fixed occasional instances where the progress dialog window is not properly closed on some Linux platforms.
- Edited CAD import advanced options to make file select easier to clear and fixed checkbox value fields.
- Clarified tool tip for static solver uninitialized conductors.
- Added pre-simulation warning messages when reference point(s) for the Huygens Surface Sensor are outside its bounding box.
- Fixed context menu on newly created objects.
- Fixed selection of geometry when cutting plane is flipped.
- Fixed several issues related to pasting objects onto the top level Project node in the project tree.
- Fixed inclusion of attached geometry when library objects are added to project.
- Fixed reported number of selected entities in feature editing when deselected.
- Fixed undo and redo for parts with materials in bundles.
- Added multi-edit for CEO goals to quickly change weight, threshold, and evaluation method.
- Added slice for entire assembly
- Fixed issue to view dielectric breakdown sensor results with custom temporal sampling
- Removed far zone reference settings from project node right click menu
- Fixed bug that did not properly update widgets in the waveguide geometry editor when inverting the propagation direction. This was a UI only issue.
- Fixed behavior of erroneously enabling some widgets in workspace editors that should be disabled after an edit session is released.
- [Scripting API] Added API Project.areMeshObjectsTouching to test touching in the mesh.
- [Scripting API] Fixed ability to use multiple types of ComponentArithmeticDataSet.
- [Scripting API] Updated documentation for scripted RelativeDirectionNormalToFace explaining u and v.
- [Scripting API] Added API to import STL files through scripting CadImport.importStl.
- [Scripting API] Added new parameter to FarZoneUtils.exportToUANFile to add reference point to exported UAN.
- [Scripting API] Added new API Project.getWaveguidePortInfo to get waveguide port information and compute modes.
- [Scripting API] Fixed ability to set environment of a process launched from XF scripting.
- [Scripting API] Fixed error in SchematicResultQuery script interface that prevented getting the correct query analysis type.
- [Scripting API] Corrected scripted documentation for Cartesian2D in multiple locations.