Re: NEC-LIST: Matlab (and other) interfaces to NEC

Hi Everyone,

This is an interesting thread to me since I've been working on
interfaces and optimizers for NEC and other programs for the last
several years. I've been doing this work first as an employee for
General Motors R&D Center and later as a consultant to Delphi Research
Labs after the spin-off of Delphi Automotive Systems from GM in 1998.

The programs I've written are called AntennaCAD and GA-NEC.

AntennaCAD is a GUI for NEC. It helps with geometry visualization,
checking and translations from popular CAD formats to NEC and visa
versa. It provides 2D and 3D plotting of any NEC output using
OpenGL. It also provides a cued dialog box method for constructing NEC
input files and other functions useful to the NEC user. AntennaCAD is
written in Visual Basic and runs on Windows 9X, NT and 2000. Please
note, this program has been development at GM since the early 1980's -
long before Nitany Scientific and other makers of similar NEC
interface programs were in existance.

GA-NEC is a genetic algorithm based optimizer for NEC. It is a general
purpose code that allows one to encode any parameter in a NEC input
file as an optimization variable. This allows you to vary geometry,
loading, excitation, etc. It also allows construction of fitness
parameters using any NEC output parameter (e.g. pattern, input
impedance, VSWR, near-zone, coupling, etc.) using a point & click
interface. It easily handles non-linear constraints and discretized
variables. GA-NEC is written in Visual Basic and runs on Windows 9x,
NT and 2000. GA-NEC can currently utilize up to 4 processors in a SMP
system to perform the NEC calculations. An interface to PVM is being
developed to utilize the full potential of a heterogeneous network
computing environment. GA-NEC is tightly integrated with AntennaCAD so
that potential solutions can be examined graphically by point & click.

If you are interested in obtaining further information on these and
other programs, please check out the brief descriptions on my web site
http://www.johnross.com/.

Ok. I'm going to apologize to those sensitive to advertising on this
list. I know this might sound like an advertisement, but it isn't
because I can't sell you any of these programs; at least not at this
time. Ownership of these programs rests either partially or wholly
with Delphi Research Labs and to date they have not taken any steps
toward releasing these codes as commercial software.

Since this thread has appeared, I thought it might be useful to tell
the world about the existence of the programs and ask those that might
be interested in using them to contact me. I'd like to get a rough
estimate of the number of NEC users who would might be interested in
them so that I can go to Delphi and make a case for their releasing
the codes as commercial software. This could save everyone a bit of
time and money reinventing the wheel. Moreover, having a few more
users would also go a long way toward improving the codes as well.

Please note, if you do me the courtesy of responding, your e-mail
address, etc. will not be bought, sold or otherwise abused for spam
purposes. I'm only interested in determining the level of interest in
the programs. My ultimate goal is to have more people benefit from the
considerable effort I have made developing these codes over the past
few years.

Thanks for reading and best wishes to all.

John

-- 
 John Ross, Ph.D, P.E.
 350 West 800 North, Suite 317                  801-359-5957
 Salt Lake City, Utah 84103                 www.johnross.com