Setting the Maximum Number of Passes
The Maximum Number of Passes value is the maximum number of mesh refinement cycles that you would like HFSS to perform. This value is a stopping criterion for the adaptive solution; if the maximum number of passes has been completed, the adaptive analysis stops. If the maximum number of passes has not been completed, the adaptive analysis will continue unless the convergence criteria are reached.
To set the maximum number of passes for an adaptive analysis:
- Under the General tab of the Solution Setup dialog box, enter a value for Maximum Number of Passes.
For driven problems and no frequency sweeps, HFSS requires at least one adaptive pass. Entering 1 will bypass adaptive analysis, generating a solution only at the solution frequency you specified.
The size of the finite element mesh — and the amount of memory required to generate a solution — increases with each adaptive refinement of the mesh. Setting the maximum number of passes too high can result in HFSS requesting more memory than is available or taking excessive time to compute solutions.
To shorten the solution time for solutions with a frequency sweep, you can set the Maximum number of passes to 0 to skip the adaptive pass phase during simulation.
Selecting 0 passes for a setup means that when you create a Report or a Field Overlay, in the Context field, the Solutions menu will not list ‘Adaptive Passes’ and ‘Last Adaptive’ for those setups. However, you can still plot the fields based on Sweep solutions if ‘Save field’ is turned on. Also, you can plot meshes using ‘Last Adaptive’ and this ‘Last Adaptive’ should be initial mesh or mesh link source mesh plus user defined mesh (if any).
If you change Maximum number of passes from non-zero to 0, then all plots or reports related to Last Adaptive or Adaptive pass are deleted once you click OK in the Driven Setup window. You can Undo this to recover if this was done in error. Messages in the Message window describe these actions.
If you choose 0 as the Maximum number of passes, the Solution Profile reports that analysis does not perform adaptive meshing.