openEMS: free and open-source 3D Cartesian & Cylindrical FDTD simulation software

Hi all,

in 2010 I started creating a free and open-source (EC)-FDTD simulation software I called openEMS. The simulation setup and geometry is defined using an extensive & easy to use Matlab-Interface.
Octave as a free alternative to Matlab is (mostly) supported as well. Furthermore it has a rudimentary graphical user interface to visualize the created structure.

The source-code, installation instructions for Linux & Windows, a lot of tutorials and documentation can be found at our openEMS-Website

Here is a list of some features:

• Efficient EC-FDTD method in full 3D cartesian coordinates (x,y,z)
• Efficient EC-FDTD method in full 3D cylindrical coordinates (ρ, φ, z)
• Fully graded mesh
• Multi-threading, SIMD (SSE) and MPI support for high speed parallel FDTD
• Simple engine extensions API to easily introduce new features to the FDTD algorithm
• Matlab-Interface
• Absorbing boundary conditions (MUR, PML)
• Coordinate dependent material definitions
• Coordinate dependent excitation definitions (e.g. mode-profiles)
• Dispersive material (Drude type)
• Field dumps in time and frequency domain as vtk or hdf5 file format
• Flexible post-processing routines (mostly in Matlab)
• Subgrids to reduce simulation time in cylindrical coordinates
• Remote simulations using SSH (Linux only)

I hope you may find openEMS useful.

Any ideas or feedback are welcome.
Any openEMS specific problems can also be discussed at the openEMS-Forum.

Best regards
Thorsten

really thanks useful

IMHO, you should ensure Octave is fully supported, since people looking for free EM software are quite likely not to have MATALB. Octave is a pretty good clone, so it should not be hard to make 100% sure things work with Octave.

Or there are others, like myself, who do have access to MATAB, but are keen on open-source, and would rather use the open-source alternative.

I note your web page says its licensed under the GPL, but it would be wise to state which version. The link points to version 3, in which case I'd say version 3. Or to be honest, I think it's better to license it under version 2, "or any later version", which gives someone the option of making a version 3 if they want, but does not stop them using it as GPL2. There are a number of companies that will use GPL2 code, but not GPL3 - Microsoft is one.

Deborah

I agree with you @Debora about the Octave support.
Octave is a pretty good clone, but handling hdf5 files is pretty rudimentary and openEMS relies on this file format to store and exchange field data to matlab/octave.

To read hdf5 files, matlab uses the functions: hdf5info and hdf5read. Octave does not have this functions at all.
Instead octave can load/save hdf5 files for its own data (Matlab can not), but does not support all features of hdf5 unfortunately, especially attributes.

I'm thinking about writing an oct-file reading the openEMS hdf5 data...

By the way, do you know of a good GUI for Octave on Linux? I think QtOctave is quite ok but its development is dead and still not as good as the Matlab GUI...

regards
Thorsten

If you rely on this file format, then I'd certainly think it worth your while to try to get the Octave developers to support it better. If that means writing the code and submitting it, then do it.
No, I don't use Octave myself, and whilst I have access to it, I have done very little with MATLAB.

Today I released a new version of openEMS: v0.0.26

It now should fully support Octave!

More information on openEMS.de
and in the release notes: Release Notes on openEMS v0.0.26

regards
Thorsten

i have installed openems . i'm n need of numerical analysis of cylindrical waveguide by fdtd method .. can i get t help from u .....

regards

jayv

Hi,

have a look at the Circular (Cylindrical) Waveguide Tutorial Example

If you have problems or question regarding the openEMS usage, please use the openEMS-Forum.

regards
Thorsten

I had installed openEMS & registered in openEMS forum but i could not post my queries .Refered the circular waveguide code .Suggestions for our cts antenna array? Theantenna structure is being attached ....

Hello,

I just downloaded openEMS. If you want to use Octave, you should try GUIoctave.

http://sites.google.com/site/guioctave/

the GUI is similar to MatLab.

regards.

Hi,

it is been a while and we are at openEMS version v0.0.31 since 01-10-2013!
A lot has changed, visit
http://openEMS.de
for more infos.

regards
Thorsten

dear thorsten
please don't use from edaboard.com topics for advertising!
you can go to "FREE electromagnetic simulators, rather than commercial ones" section and introduce your software.
because I think that your behavior is contrast to "Respect the rights of others" that use from the above section to introduce their software!