External simulation tools

KQCircuits supports exports to following external simulation tools:

• Ansys Electronics desktop (HFSS and Q3D Extractor)

• Gmsh and Elmer

• Sonnet

The main feature in KQCircuits simulation framework is the ability to export geometries from designed layouts into the format required by the external simulation tool. The geometry is described by a simulation object, which is typically an instances of a dedicated subclass of either Simulation or CrossSectionSimulation.

The geometry described by a simulation object can be exported to any of above external simulation tool using a tool-specific export function. Namely, these are

• export_ansys(),

• export_elmer(),

• export_sonnet().

The export function takes a list of simulation objects as an argument, where each simulation object corresponds to a unique simulation. The export functions also take several tool-specific parameters to setup the simulations.

The output from the KQCircuits simulation export is a stand-alone folder consisting of scripts and data files needed to execute the simulations within the external simulation tool. The stand-alone folder can be copied to an external environment in which KQCircuits does not need to be installed. Automated scripting can handle the simulations from building up the geometry until post-processing of the simulation results.

More detailed guidance for the simulations is given below:

• Simulation objects
  • The Simulation class
    • Box
    • Ports
    • Face stack
  • Simulation subclass
    • Single element subclass
    • General subclass
  • Geometry sweeps
• Export functions
  • Ansys export
  • Elmer export
    • Sonnet export
  • Geometry from Klayout GUI
• Simulation features
  • S-parameter matrix
  • Capacitance matrix
  • Eigenmode
  • Energy integrals and participation ratio
  • Cross-sectional simulations
  • pyEPR
• Gmsh/Elmer export
• Run and export in one line
• Elmer remote simulations workflow