July 9, 2019: The content below helps navigate the new features in this release. A full list of updates is available in the Reference Manual's Appendix.
XFdtd BioPro customers using a high performance compute (HPC) environment with a job scheduler—PBS, SLURM—must update their resource list. This release adds a Bio Solver Token that must be counted similar to GPU tokens. Users should contact Remcom technical support for assistance.
Electrostatic Discharge Analysis
XF's electrostatic discharge (ESD) analysis determines an electronic device's susceptibility to damage and failure from the current generated by an ESD event. This capability allows users to view the locations at risk of experiencing dielectric breakdown, as well as reports of circuit components susceptible to permanent damage.
Updated settings include dielectric strength, as well as rated voltage and current, which must be defined for each material or circuit component definition, respectively. Dielectric breakdown sensors then monitor cell edges for electric fields that exceed the input parameters and identify locations where damage is likely.
Allegro brd Import
XF supports Allegro .brd files, allowing users to import PCB geometry from circuit layout design tools, such as Cadence's Allegro PCB Design package. This updates the data exchange to XF for a variety of applications in the PCB industry.
This addition expands XF's three-dimentional PCB customization options while following the same workflow as importing an ODB++ database, and supports PCB wrap and crop capabilities.
Additional Capabilities
There are several usability, performance, scripting, and other updates in this version.
Here is a select list of modifications:
- Synchronized the playback of field sequences from multiple sensors of the same result type.
- Far zone sensor displays invalidity message if incompatible outer boundary conditions are selected.
- Dielectric volume averaged meshing, surface current sensor meshing, and volume mesh objects are multi-threaded on Windows.
- A Copy Invalidity Message option is available through an invalidity icon's right-click menu.
- Increased accuracy of far-field radiated power computation when using the far field method for dissipated power.
- Increased accuracy of XACT dissipated power computations.
- Optenni Lab files can be exported to disk.
- [Scripting API] Added new methods to Part class: getFaceNormals() and getFacePositions().
- [Scripting API] Added missing class GraphMarkup.