Exporting Freecad Objects to gprMax - Finite Difference Time Domain

[Jean Paul White]

Hello community and gprMax developers

I am currently working with FDTD for electromagnetism and antenna design and analysis application for GPR. I am currently using open source FreeCAD to build the 3D parametric basic antennas. I want to export the files ( .STEP, .IGES, .DXP, .DWG) from the CAD file, through a Python scripted library that I develop, and convert this file into a .IN file for doing the processing in gprMax for any kind geometry, regardless of the geometry file (because the antenna is visualized in the FreeCAD interface). 

I would like to know how can I convert these extention file's data using FDTD (python lib), in order to export the geometric parameters into gprMax successfully, or if the geometry have to be built "manually" using the object construction commands. What does gprMax needs in a .IN file for processing

Best

[Craig Warren]

Dear Jean-Paul,

We have a feature coming in the future for STL file to FDTD voxels, but it is still in development - https://github.com/gprMax/gprMax/pull/295

In the mean time you might want to look at the #geometry_objects_read command (http://docs.gprmax.com/en/latest/input.html#geometry-objects-read) which allows you to import geometry directly from a suitably made HDF5 file. This may fit your workflow.

Kind regards,

Craig

[James Whittaker]

Hi Craig,

Is this feature available for users to test now? I understand that it's WIP so bugs are to be expected but I've got a complex model of a antenna arrangement to build up and using indivual commands within the IN files is going to be extremely challenging.

Thanks

James