cst mws vs. ansys
Well, let me throw my 20 cents inhere. To my opinion both SW are complementing each other. I still prefer the HFSS for they implement many physics and microwave features and not only the GUY. Quite frankly, CST GUY is not even theirs - they have this licensed to them by Dassault spin-off that every one can get today. Interested folk can pm me if they want to know the URL. Next to it: if one reads carefully the CST manual it says that the 'wideband' accuracy is in fact not so high and for truly large badwidth one must resort to splitting the band in parts. Third - CST folks is really smart in a way - they saw the HUGE deficiency the time-tomain solver exhibits and veeeeery quickly implemented the frequency domain solver - feature that most of the engineers highly praise for both speed and accuracy and one that resembles the HFSS one
I still wander what CST folks has to say about it
. Next to it, the default settings of CST are too poor for any decent structure. One has to tune the meshing quite fine and some other advanced FDTD specific techniques. Time domain solvers generally exhibit some stability issues to handle - please pay attention that FDTD DOES NOT use the acclaimed FIT (Finite Integration Technique)in MWS but only in MAFIA. Simply said, the unstructured grid is difficult to handle in terms of stability etc. It is a rather long topic to discuss in here.
HFSS - rock solid core, great meshing with best possible manual meshing flexibility, MANY advanced features like Master-Slave BNDs, Freq-dependent materials, ferrite devices easy to do, superior antenna simulations, phase array is like a pleasure doing, etc. great flexibility in applying boundaries one over the other with clear order. Many more ports and boundaries -
Cons: we all know about the shitty and ugly interface - Ansoft folks is heavily working on it - and my information is that their interface will be far superior. One other thing to consider - for heavy WG structures - CST is desperately inaccurate and slow - especially for resonant structures, but not only. Price to pay with CST is finer mesh and looonger time.
So, my opinion is that the 2 solvers compliment each other for various applications - CST is definitely more user friendly and 'colorful', while HFSS is more 'professional solver' of the old time when every one was working under DOS like (or rather Unix) style. CST has its own merits but if I have to send a structure to the CNC machine I'd rather put in scrutiny with both - HFSS being the last one and compare. In terms of accuracy - I'd rather stick to HFSS, while speedier award is granted to CST.
Hope it helps. I very much praise the idea to have eaither CST MWS or HFSS (or both
) forums in here.
greetz,
P.S About IE3D - speedy Gonsalez but lacks accuracy - Zeland is claiming accuracy is not their biggest concern (private talks with them) but rather being able to simulate 'larger' structures. It is why no one uses IE3D to design MMICs for instance. Losses in IE3D are incomparably poorer than Sonnet or Momentum - Again, best user interface and other 'cosmetics' in it - for patchy antennas be aware of about 5% freq shift downwards whatever you do in the setup. That's all for now.
Wish everyone Happy New Year.