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

GW tag segments x0 y0 z0 x1 y1 z1 radius

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) 

