Running simulation

Important

Make sure that you have initialised the virtual environment following these instructions.

Options

These are the arguments for gerber2ems

Option	Description
`-h` `--help`	Prints the help message.
`--config [file]`	Specifies the location of the simulation configuration file. `default: ./simulation.json`
`-i [dir]` `--input [dir]`	Specifies the directory containing the exported Gerber, drill and simulation port files. `default: ./fab`
`-o [dir]` `--output [dir]`	Specifies the location of the: geometry data, simulation results, export E-fields, and post processed graphs. `default: ./ems`
`-c` `--convert`	Convert Gerber files to images.
`-g` `--geometry`	Create geometry files for openEMS.
`-s` `--simulate`	Run openEMS simulation.
`-p` `--postprocess`	Process openEMS results into S parameters and impedance values and saves them to a csv file.
`-r` `--render`	Renders graph of processed data.
`-a` `--all`	Run convert, geometry, simulate, and postprocess steps.
`--ef` `--export-field`	Flag to enable exporting field data if specified in layer config.
`-t [threads]` `--threads [threads]`	Number of threads that openEMS simulation will use. `default: auto`
`-d` `--debug`	Flag to enable debug level logging output.
`-l [level]` `--log [level]`	Set logging level: `[DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR]`. `default: INFO`

These are the following steps taken to go from your exported PCB files to graphs.

Step	Description
Convert	Gerber files are converted into images using `gerbv`.
Geometry	PCB image files, via drills, simulation port and PCB stackup configuration are read to produce a single `geometry.xml` file.
Simulation	openEMS imports the `geometry.xml` file and simulation configuration to produce E-field data (if exported) and time domain port measurements for each excitation source.
Postprocessing	openEMS data is processed into S-parameters, impedance values (for signal traces and differential traces), and graphs are generated for each of these accordingly

Consider an example where our directory has:

Run entire pipeline and output to default location

gerber2ems -a

Run entire pipeline and input/output from custom locations

gerber2ems --config "custom_simulation.json" -i "custom_fab/" -o "custom_results/" -a

Run convert to images pass only

gerber2ems -c

Run geometry pass only

gerber2ems -g

Run simulation pass only

gerber2ems -s

Run postprocessing results only

gerber2ems -p

Run graph rendering only

gerber2ems -r

Run simulation with custom number of threads

gerber2ems -a --threads 16

Run simulation and export field data

gerber2ems -a --export-field