Thanks for touching on this topic, I've tried it myself few months ago and I was quite lost between the 4 piece of software needed to compute something with FEA. Robert & Lukas, could you please do a tutorial on how to extract capacitance and inductance from a PCB track ? It would be really usefull to have a documented open source workflow to create representative spice model with parasitic element from the PCB.
@@krzysztofkwiecinski148 have you actually extracted a PCB trace with OpenEMS? More than 10 years ago I was looking into Salome-Meca, but gave up. The amount hacking needed for these tools to take a PCB trace was too much. Is there any tool that can extract a complete PCB diffpair with stitching vias and BGA breakout?
@@buenos4799 Yes, i have simulated PCB imported from hyperlynx file exported from KiCad, and Altium, i did boty antenna and trace simulation. Best option od to mesh it manualy, simple uniform mesh gave me the best results overall
@@korjaa i'm considering sharing my entire simple example project using KiCad, hyp2mat, and OpenEMS with Matlab/Octave interface script. Multilayer meshing should be doable
Excellent topic! If you export a Parasolid file (with copper) out of Altium you can bring the board directly into SolidWorks. Once there you can remove anything not supporting your analysis and export the remainder as STEP files directly out of SolidWorks (no need to do the DXF-Import-Trim...etc. boogie). (The Parasolid file includes all the dimensional data for the copper, layers, etc. with it).
@@myetis1990 If you pay for the integration server capability then maybe, otherwise give it a shot. I use Altium and Solidworks on a daily basis. You can bring a Solidworks part into Altium with no issue, but Solidworks will not natively bring in an Altium file. Saving a file out as a STEP file does not provide the option to include copper layers, but the Parasolid file export does. You can move files between Altium and Solidworks most seamlessly (without paying more money) using the Parasolid file format; both applications handle that format more or less natively.
Haven't watched the full video so maybe you mention it, but note that in Paraview the lightkit is enabled by default, which will shade your geometry in 3D so the colors won't look the same as the colorbar. It's a simple fix, just find and click the lightbulb icon in the top toolbar, usually towards the upper right. That disables the lightkit and voila! No more shading
Absolutely fantastic video!!! well done. However, I have a question. After installing Elmer I do not see all of the equations/solvers. I can only see electrostatic,heat, Helmholtz, linear elasticity,mesh, navier stokes - can you let me know how to add the rest of the equations/solvers available for Elmer GUI? Big thank you
I tried to learn code saturne-SYRTHES coupled simulation for thermal simulation of PCB but I failed. I started with "three 2D disks" tutorial. The needed tools were very difficult to install (needed compilation on linux, there were bugs, missing libraries, issues with versions of python), when I finally managed to get through installation the thermal conduction simulation and fluid simulation probably worked but failed to cooperate. Then I gave up. I've never tried elmer, it seems difficult to learn for me, looks like there are no good practical tutorials and examples to start with (but maybe I'll try it after watching this video). I really like OpenEMS for EM simulations. It comes with examples, documentation and support on forum so it's much easier to learn.
Hi Thank you for posting this. @lukas : falls du das hier liest - es wäre Kool wenn du dein Dev Log auch veröffentlichen würdest . Insbesondere: 1. Deine Design decisions - was hast du entscheiden und warum 2. Deine failure log - was ist schiefgelaufen und warum. Ich werde mit großem Interesse dein Dev Log lesen. Ich bin auch dabei mein Open source Motherboard zu designen. Danke
Freut mich das du das Projekt verfolgen möchtest :) Es wird einen Dev Log geben, unter anderem genau mit den Punkten die du angesprochen hast. Der erste Artikel zur Einleitung sollte in den nächsten Tagen erscheinen
The interesting point to note is that the Free Software for this kind of simulations is almost in a stale state, almost all are rarely updated, not even the website with modern Examples that show something real for PCB board designers. Almost every free software simulation website shows just magnetic motors and Antennas and few bits more. I cannot find an example of free software that is able to do a 3D simulation, as example, of a small PCB with just two layer with tracks, pads and Vias (I cannot imagine 4 layers tracks and Vias capability is possible with this free software!!!) If I want to understand how to use PCB 3D simulations of course is better to use free software to start with. In 30d evaluation of ADS for example it is not enough due to the complexity. That's why Free Software Simulators have to grow. To help engineers to increase their effectiveness and quality of their judgement when creating shiny PCBs.
@@andreacrema2980 unfortunately I’m still trying. I used freecad to re-export mesh in format which elmer understand, but non existing pins appear under the board.
@@MichaelLenz1 Thanks! Same journey here. Let's see when sparselizad kicks in with a less convoluted process. oh, if you have any update please let me know.
@@andreacrema2980it seems RU-vid not likes links in the comments. There’s new script which pricesses Gerber files and simulates using openEMS, called gerber2ems. I successfully run it today and saw the animation in paraview, works great!
Does he plan to design a complete laptop? Even the motherboard? What kind of specs is he aiming for? I’d love to follow his progress. That would make a great series if done right.
Yes I´m planning to design the whole laptop from start to finish :) I´m currently working on a series of blog articles on that project. The first article will go online in a few days. I´ll post a link on my social media channels
@@LukasHenkel hello, I have two questions regarding that presentation: 1. Salome gives me errors of overlapping when computing mesh, how to deal with that correctly, is my step file generated incorrectly? I'm using SVG file format to export PCB from EasyEDA, opening that with FreeCAD, removing not needed features, extruding my trace and pads in opposite directions, but they for sure are not overlapping 2. when fixing above problem with option to Partition (in Salome), then computing mesh goes correctly and then running simulation in Elmer i get results in ParaView as if my pads Input and/or (don't know) Sink were floating/not connected to main copper body what I'm doing wrong?
@@LukasHenkel it would be great if the workflow is simplified with some scripting. FreeCAD support natively Python and with plugins. for the pads, maybe approximately using the solder paste layer you could get the pads to be exported as thickness and integrated intot the process.
@@LukasHenkel You don't want to use Kicad for the laptop design? Altium is not really in the spirit of the open-source. HTML Interactive Bom can also be published online from Kicad...
Thank you Robert, thank you Lukas - please keep it up! As you probably know, many people appreciate your informative content and open-mindedness. /* Windsor Treaty - I'm sorry if my English isn't that good for you either; Aber es würde mich auch nicht interessieren wie du darüber denkst. Lass dir doch helfen... */
Often, the captions help, but in this case, I think they needed a cleaning, and I'm not sure how hard that is for Robert. (e.g., GABA -> Gerber, lens -> glance, CUT->CAD, as best I could tell.)
