OpenEMS, an open-source tool for simulating electromagnetic structures, has been a valuable resource for the scientific community for some time. Its capabilities continue to expand, thanks to ongoing contributions that add new functionalities. While the openEMS package comprises various algorithms necessary for electromagnetic simulations, providing the required input can be tedious. Although programmatic interfaces via Matlab, Octave, and Python exist, they are not as user-friendly as commercial options like HFSS or CST Microwave Studio. Fortunately, this is gradually changing, making openEMS more accessible to a broader audience, including myself. One notable contribution is Gerber2EMS by AntMicro, which facilitates the use of Gerber files as input for openEMS to perform electromagnetic simulations..<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gerber2EMS is specifically made to work with KiCAD but with a little tweak here and there does allow one to use gerbers generated by any other PCB design tool. The installation process is quite simple if you are working on Windows. Things got messy when I tried to set it up on Linux. So, for the sake of this tutorial, I will be using Windows 11 and Python 3.11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before starting, install the latest version of KiCAD on your PC. Gerber2EMS relies on specific names used by KiCAD to identify various PCB layers. As a result, it won’t directly recognize Gerbers generated by other tools, such as Altium Designer. However, with a few modifications to the Gerber importer script, you can use Gerber2EMS with Altium-generated Gerber files.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Proceeding with our first step, ensure you have Python 3.10 or Python 3.11 installed on your computer. Download the openEMS package<\/a> from the link and extract it to your drive. You don’t need to build the sources if you are using Windows 11. Follow the instructions below to install the Python packages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ensure you set the environment variable pointing to the openEMS folder below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Your path may differ from the one given above. Therefore, ensure you enter the right path in your environment variable. Restart the terminal for the variable to come into effect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Download Gerber2ems package from this link.<\/a> For git users, simply run this command:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Go to the gerber2ems<\/em> directory and run<\/p>\n\n\n\n This installs all the binaries for gerber2ems<\/em> that can be called through Windows terminal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Next, you need to install two more tools, gerbv<\/a><\/em> and Paraview.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Gerbv<\/em> comes in a zip package which needs to be extracted somewhere. Upon extracting, add the gerbv <\/em>directory to your PATH <\/em>environment variable. This is a very important step and should not be missed. I tried running gerber2ems without adding gerbv <\/strong><\/em>to PATH <\/em>variable. I struggled for some time<\/em> before realising the problem. After adding gerbv<\/strong><\/em> to the PATH environment variable, everything worked fine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To test your installations, run the following commands in your command terminal.<\/p>\n\n\n\ncd C:\\opt\\openEMS\\python\npip install CSXCAD-0.6.2-cp310-cp310-win_amd64.whl\npip install openEMS-0.0.33-cp310-cp310-win_amd64.whl<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
setx OPENEMS_INSTALL_PATH C:\\opt\\openEMS<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
git clone https:\/\/github.com\/antmicro\/gerber2ems.git<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
pip install .<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
gerber2ems\n\ngerbv<\/pre>\n\n\n\n