Field Solver for Linux, & Plating Question - RF Cafe Forums

RF Cafe Forums closed its virtual doors in late 2012 mainly due to other social media platforms dominating public commenting venues. RF Cafe Forums began sometime around August of 2003 and was quite well-attended for many years. By 2012, Facebook and Twitter were overwhelmingly dominating online personal interaction, and RF Cafe Forums activity dropped off precipitously. Regardless, there are still lots of great posts in the archive that ware worth looking at. Below are the old forum threads, including responses to the original posts. Here is the full original RF Cafe Forums on Archive.org

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Quantum

Post subject: Field Solver for Linux, & Plating Question

Unread postPosted: Sat Aug 14, 2004 7:29 pm

Hello, what a great resource... wish I'd found y'all before.

Designing a microwave circuit in the 2.4GHz range. Looking for an -accessible- field solver to lay out PCB, meaning one that doesn't require a PhD in math to use. I know exactly what components I'll be using, and will design using co-planar waveguide design, but hope for a precise and easy modelling and interactive analysis of the layout.

Looked at Ansoft's two major products, and neither makes sense to me in practice. Word here seems to be that ADS is also non-intuitive. We run Linux, and the field-solver would ideally run on OSS platform, but that's not mandatory. It does though need to be accessible to a reasonably-intelligent but math-challenged person. For example, if I want to make a 1/4wave lightning bypass which blocks at freq of interest; to model length, vs copper core and plating of silver or gold? Or distances between absorptive switch, bandpass, and poweramp?

Also as to plating; my brother (20 yr TI engineer) tells me that gold electroplating is not advisable at microwave, as microscopically it has a surface of 'tiny hairs'. That chemical gold-plating is better due to large granule size. NE1 heard of this?

If neither is advisable, how should traces be protected from corrosion and allow good skin-effect? Silver has good properties, but oxydizes horribly.

Thanks in advance.

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Unread postPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2004 12:31 pm

Hi!

Try Sonnet Lite (downloadable for *free* from www.sonnetsoftware.com ).

It's limited in capacity for the free version, but still gives you a good usable program with excellent accuracy.

Good Luck

Posted  11/12/2012