NEC-LIST: Gridding up vehicles

Assume that one desires to model an antenna on a vehicle of some type,
whether that vehicle is a land, sea or air vehicle. Assume that one
has some computer model of the vehicle, like an Autocad drawing file.
What is the easiest way to mesh up the vehicle for NEC modeling? I
have used MATLAB in the past to create meshes, but not for such
non-uniform surfaces as a vehicle surface. Is there some program that
will take as its input the drawing file, and output a mesh? Will that
mesh conform to NEC requirements?

If one's wavelength gets too small, one couldn't ignore the finer
structures of the vehicle. I imagine one would come to a point where
the vehicle was so big in terms of wavelengths that one couldn't model
it. I imagine that one could strategically ignore (not mesh up) parts
of the vehicle that are optically blocked from the antenna, in order
to reduce the size of the matrices.

Any thoughts or advice on this topic?

Matt Taylor
matayl_at_inr.net
Received on Wed Oct 20 1999 - 22:21:12 EDT