FRED v10.41 Released
FRED v10.41 is officially released today! A few of the exciting new features added in this release are described below:
Element Composites
The Element Composite construct allows for the creation of complex solid geometries by application of the union, intersection and difference boolean operations to combine Element Primitives and/or element composites. Once specified, the composite is maintained as a dynamic solid which will update as its component elements are modified. Element Composites are exportable to CAD using STEP or IGES formats.
Coil Surface
The coil surface type is defined as a circular cross section swept along a helical curve, where the helical axis of symmetry is along Z. There are four parameters which completely specify the coil surface; the helix radius (R), the circle radius (r), the coil pitch and the number of coil turns. Additionally, an element primitive coil has been implemented to support this surface type.
Grating Phase
The default grating settings add phase continuously between line pairs but modulo 2*PI across the entire grating, resetting the phase when crossing into a new line pair. For some applications, the desired behavior is that phase is added continuously across the entire grating. The options “Add modulo 2*PI phase per grating line” and “Add full 2*PI phase per grating line” allow the user to toggle between these two modes of operation. The additional specification “Grating line offset (number of grating lines)” allows the user to specify the zero phase point in the grating with respect to the surface origin when operating in the continuous phase mode.
Analysis Results Nodes (ARNs)
The Analysis Results folder on the object tree stores Analysis Results Nodes created during the current document session. Right mouse clicking on the folder allows ARN creation, deletion, and display in both the visualization view and the chart view.
Image Artifact Diagnostic Tool
If a raytrace has been performed using the Advanced Raytrace option with ray paths enabled, contributing raypath information for a particular region of interest can be reported directly from the chart view for an incoherent spatial analysis. This feature can be executed by holding down the ALT keyboard button while using the mouse to select a region of the main chart view (turn off “perspective view” using the right mouse button menu option).
Stray Light Report / Raypaths Output
The “Output Stray Light Report” and “Output Path Report” in the Stray Light Report and Raytrace Paths dialog prints to the output window a copy of the receiver settings, normalization settings, list settings, report headers, path information for each selected row of the stray light paths report, and total ray count, power % and power for all selected rows. Contiguous rows in the report can be selected by holding the “Shift” keyboard button while non contiguous rows can be selected by holding the “Ctrl” keyboard button. This option is very useful for copying paths of interest to the FRED output window for transfer to another program for analysis or documentation.
Ray Path Node Number(s)
The Ray Path Node Number(s) tool allows an object to report a node ID other than itself for ray path purposes, simplifying and reducing the reported ray paths following an advanced raytrace. This feature can be particularly useful when working with models imported from CAD, which often define a single structure as a composite of smaller surfaces. In such cases the composite surfaces can be set to report a single node ID in the ray paths list, greatly simplifying path based analyses.
