Computer-aided design import

The preferred method of geometric modeling is computer-aided design (CAD) import, where a CAD geometries file is imported by FDTD++. A number of CAD formats are supported, however that imported by FDTD++ must be in the I-DEAS UNV format. See the Section Geometries file for more information about this file. Below discusses the import of the CAD file into FDTD++.

Note: It is recommended to use "normalized" units when CAD modeling (e.g., 10 vs 10^-9 for 10 nm), and then perform a conversion to SI units with the keyword geom scale in the parameters file.

Importing the CAD file

A CAD file is imported at runtime by specifying its name during the execution of FDTD++. For example, suppose that your geometries file is named geom.unv. At runtime, FDTD++ would be executed by:

FDTDxx param mat geom.unv

where the last field specifies the CAD file.