The Phi Mesher

The Phi mesher is a layout-based meshing technology, available in the HFSS 3D Layout interface. This advanced meshing technology is capable of rapidly generating an initial mesh ensuring faster simulations that can be further accelerated and enhanced by using high performance computing.

While the traditional Classic mesher is suitable for HFSS 3D MCAD and for certain geometries solved in HFSS 3D Layout, the Phi Mesher works on the HFSS 3D layout interface where principally 2.5D geometry is comprised of z-extruded layers that have no oblique facets. Therefore package models, for example, containing bondwires cannot take advantage of this meshing technology. Phi mesher uses a unique method to generate the initial mesh from the a priori knowledge of the layered nature of the geometry. It generates a volume mesh directly from the layout data saving tremendous amount of time, requires less user clean up, and eliminates several situations that might cause potential kernel errors in the traditional 3D modeler flow. A typical complex layout package is shown below.

When compared to the traditional Classic mesh, the Phi mesher is several orders of magnitude faster, including from the initial meshes the adaptive meshing algorithm produces to the final convergence. Another advantage of the Phi mesher is its ability to mesh larger and more complex designs previously unmeshable from the traditional 3D interface or with the Classic mesher in the 3D layout interface. In cases where Phi produces large meshes, you can use the HPCsolver feature to leverage more cores and distributed memory to neutralize the time that would have been otherwise required for the simulation to complete.