NAME

  Wires - a program to view antennas

SYNOPSIS

  Wires

DESCRIPTION

This program is written in Perl/Tk, and utilizes color to provide visualization of antennas described by input files for NEC2, (or somnec).

The program is simple to use.  The geometry of an antenna is described to NEC2 via a data file that contains, among other things, (usually many) lines of the form

GWtagsegmentsx0y0z0x1y1z1radius

This line represents an antenna element whose endpoints have coordinates (x0,y0,z0) and (x1, y1, z1).

Some versions of NEC2 use an alternate data representation of the form

GWtag,segments,x0,y0,z0,x1,y1,z1,radius

Wires is able to read data lines of either form and provide a graphic representation of the antenna.  Wires makes no use of the contents of the NEC2 data file, other than to read the "GW" lines.

Wires reads the same data files that NEC2 does, but the only data lines of interest to Wires are the lines which begin with "GW".  Wires does not attempt to follow any scaling in the data file, and instead provides its own scaling for the visual window.

The NEC2 file which describes the antenna can be selected by using the mouse.  After the file is selected, the antenna is depicted in a window.  This window contains three canvases, providing "XY plane", "YZ plane", and "XZ plane" views of the same antenna. Each element of the antenna is colored differently, but any element is colored the same in all three canvases.

A sample data file which describes a rhombic is included.  Wires has successfully modeled antennas with more than 1500 elements.

Wires is part of the W5GFE Perl Antenna Toolkit.  It is released under terms of the GNU Public License. 

AUTHOR

Bill Walker, W5GFE, bw@cs.ecok.edu 

SEE ALSO

perl(1), Necview (W5GFE), Elevation (W5GFE), Azimuth (W5GFE) 

