And welcome to this series of courses
on 'how to get started with Ansys Q3D'.
And in our other previous videos
we've shown the user interface of the
student version of the Ansys electronics desktop
and that's AEDT for short.
So, Ansys offers
several electromagnetic solvers
within the single
AEDT user interface.
We've HFSS,
we've Maxwell,
we've SIwave
which are finite element (FEM) based solvers
and SBR+, which is based on ray tracing
and now Q3D
is a quasi static solver
and all these solvers
solve Maxwell's equations
but in different approaches.
In this video
we're going to introduce you to the Q3D
design type in the Ansys electronics desktop
and Q3D
as I said is the
3D
quasi-static
electromagnetic
EM simulation software tool
and it calculates fields,
equivalent circuits,
S-parameters,
Inductances,
resistance and capacitance
and the Q3D tool
has similar results
that the other solvers also have.
Results that electrical engineers look for
and the key differentiator in this tool
is in the term quasi statics.
So what this quasi static mean?
It means that this frequency tends
to zero. Just making the wave effect negligible
and it decouples the E and H
in Maxwell's equations
and depending on the application
you're trying to simulate
you can solve for just one field
you can solve for E or H
and this save your computational resources.
What does that mean?
It's savings in both time
and hardware resources, memory resources
In short Q3D is a
simulation software tool
streamlined for quickly
determining electro-parasitic values
of inductance,
capacitance,
resistance
and conductance.
Q3D can be used
for extracting the lumped RLCG parameters
and spice models as well
and it can also be used for
low frequency power,
signal integrity
and select high frequency applications.
Wide varied applications
and the process flow for Q3D
is really simple.
It's very easy to follow.
and what are they?
Create the 3D structure,
add boundary conditions,
add nets,
assign terminals,
setup the solve solutions,
view them.
So, lets go ahead and
expand on these steps a bit more.
Like most of the Ansys simulation tools
the first and foremost step
is to draw the physical model geometry
simulate what you are going to model
and you can create 3D objects or
2D surface models
inside of Q3D.
You can import the structures
that are designed using other CAD tool as well
or you can actively link
your model drawing,
your mechanical drawing
as drawn inside the Ansys Spaceclaim.
It's in the toolbar.
Next, now let's assign boundary conditions
and Q3D offers
two types of boundary conditions
thin conductor
or infinite ground plane.
The thin conductor boundary
replaces the 3D conductor
with the 2D sheets.
So what does this mean?
It means that the current lines
on the conductor
lies on a 2D surface.
For example if you use a
conductor trace and you use the
rectangular 3D model
instead of determining
where the current lies
whether on the top or the bottom or the sides
it's now on a 2D surface
equivalent 2D surface for that 3D object.
So it helps you to specify
location of the charges
and the 2D sheet
it can be any lined or curved surface
It doesn't have to be rectilinear
any shape without limitation.
The infinite ground plane
you can apply that to a surface or an object
and it has what does the name applies
assigns that object or surface
to an infinite extents.
So what does that translate to
that means simplifying the analytical equations
your solving limits are now infinity.
Also note you can only have
one infinite ground boundary condition
in a single design.
Ok, so next step, assign nets.
What's a net?
So a net is the collection
of touching conductor materials
or surfaces or objects.
Note you can't have
perfect electrical conductors
in the same net as some non PEC
conductor material.
So you can assign nets
manually or automatically
to any conductor ends
and that's can be classified as signal
floating or ground nets
and a terminal can be assigned
to a 2D or 3D object
and it could be assigned as a source
or a sink.
Signal nets are typically sources
and floating or ground nets are sinks.
You must use your engineering knowledge
to define these terminals
because the assignment define
the way Q3D solves.
Q3D offers three types of solution setups
They are the capacitance the conductance,
DC resistance and inductance,
AC resistance and inductance
plus nice thing about it
you can generate these resulting
RLCG field plots
in any corresponding E or H field plot
any corresponding electric
or magnetic field plot
you get a visualization of these fields.
So by default
Q3D extractor is
AC RL and DC RL solver.
They're constant voltage,
equipotential terminals.
For the AC RL calculations
a constant voltage is held
over the perimeter of the terminal face
of that selected surface
and for the DC RL calculations
the constant voltage is held over the
area of the terminal face.
Now if you have a long list of nets
perhaps many conductor terminals
that don't touch
but they are electrically connected.
Q3D supports the matrix reduction
so you can manually assign them
and in the solve setup
you explicitly select
a Q3D solution that you're interested in
the capacitance and conductance
the DC resistance and inductance DC RL
the AC resistance and inductance AC RL.
You can select any of these or all of these
and after the simulation model is solved
you can perform post processing
of the obtained results.
You can view the solution data
in rectangular tabular format
or in a rectangular plot.
If you setup the variables and you
perform the parametric solve
you can then view the optimetric results.
You can plot the field plots the E and H,
overlaid them on the model geometry.
You can create animations of these
field quantities as well.
Over and above that
you can create custom quantities
and then also plot them.
There's lots of things that you can do
inside of Q3D.
Actually lots of things and customization
you can do in any of our Ansys tools.
So we just went over
the steps that are necessary
to launch a Q3D extractor simulation.
In the next video we're going to show you
how to design and analyze
a planar spiral inductor using Q3D
and so thank you for watching
this getting started video
on the Ansys Q3D extractor tool
and for more information
on our Ansys electronic tools
or any of our Ansys simulation tools
please go to
ansys.com/course today.