HFSS, custom colormap for waves

I have seen COMSOL and CST have a default wave colormap ([-1 0 1]) which makes is much easier to follow field distribution like when looking for wave-vector direction. I was wondering how one can set such a colormap in HFSS; let's say for E-field.

One solution can be to normalize the field within a sin function, but I am not sure how accurate it can be and if field calculator would be able to do it. Any comment, experience and idea would be much appreciated.

Hi
What version of HFSS you are using I belive as per my woking experience with HFSS9 you can easily see vector field distribution in HFSS9 and it follows the sme convension as in CST or COMSOL

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. Actually, the vector representation is not quit the thing which would be helpful for my work. I am looking into something like this:
http://www.k-wave.org/documentation/getColorMap.php which CST and COMSOL have it by default.

Any built-in way in HFSS to produce this colormap would make it much easier.

Hi violetcrow,

I'm not too sure I understand what you are looking for. Plotting ComplexMagnitude E on a surface will produce a color map, with the phase term removed. Plotting Magnitude E on the surface will do the same, but will keep the phase term. If you're looking to plot a component of the E vector, you will need to create this in the formula/equation editor.

Hi,

Thanks for the comment. The goal is to observe the backward wave in metamaterial structure, so I need to keep the phase term, and Mag_E is the option, so far so good. But after plotting, the only useful colormap style is rainbow, right? But the wave style would be much better in this work, wave style range is [-1 1] so maximum and minimum of the field are different in color rather than in rainbow style, and it would make it much easier to see backward wave in more complex structures. And that's what I am looking for.

I'm still not sure what you are looking for. You can manually set the maximum and minimum values of the plot to whatever you want, or you can even normalize them to the [-1,1] range using the fields calculator. Looking under "Color Map" options, you can also select "Ramp" rather than "Rainbow", which looks like what you are describing (HFSS 13).

Imagine we have set k-vector along Z and E-vector along X! Now by all sorts of plots, either Rainbow or Ramp, the limits is always positive when they have been plotted for Mag_E. So, there is no difference between maximum of magnitude of E vector when it is along +X or -X. But when set in wave colormap, these two would be distinguishable as [-1, 1] represents maximum of magnitude of E vector along -X and +X respectively.

I guess I have to work with field calculator to generate such a plot.

If I understand you now, thats just mag(E)*cos(phase(E))? Using the calculator this is simple to plot. Or more specifically, this is the X component of E.

I believe it is right! As a physicist, my mind is used to solve it in vectors, so dot products of E and X-unit vectors. I guess I have to learn how to use this field calculator then.

Hi
I agree with the field calculater you can plot any componsnt of field and it is really comfortable and esy to use field calculater to plot any compnent of field.