3D objects (3DO) Bitmap (BMP) Boundary (BND) Directive (DIR) Domain (DOM) Expansion (EXP) Field (FLD) Field formula (FLF) Field transform (FLT) Function (FUN) General information Grid formula (GRF) Grid transform (GRT) Integral (INT) MMP (MMP) Movie (AVI) OpenGL (OGL) Palette (PAL) PET basis (BAS) PFD (PFD) Project (PRO) Window (WIN)
OpenMaXwell saves parts of the project in several ASCII files. This allows one to maintain libraries of certain objects and to compose a project by assembling the corresponding ASCII files. The ASCII text files contain data such as, the definitions of boundaries of a model, the definitions of finite difference operators, the field computed by OpenMaXwell or by an external program, for example, a numerical optimizer that "design" only certain parts of a project. Storing data on ASCII files allows the user to create, inspect, and modify the data using any text editor. In addition the ASCII files can become the interface between OpenMaXwell and other computational electromagnetic packages if they can be extended to read and write the corresponding OpenMaXwell files.
The length of the mantissa of real numbers can be specified in the Project dialog. When more than 10 digits are specified, the Fortran * format is used, which provides the maximum accuracy and causes considerably longer data files.
Each ASCII file essentially contains the data of a dialog and its sub dialogs. From the corresponding dialog, you read and write the file using the Read... and Write... button respectively. When you let OpenMaXwell write a specific ASCII file and read it by a text editor, you can visualize its content.
Different file extensions are used to differentiate the different file types. Note that other packages may use the same extensions for their files but these will be incompatible with OpenMaXwell. Details of the different file formats are detailed below.
All OpenMaXwell ASCII files start with a line that contains a file ID string with a version number. When you write a code that writes such an ASCII file, note that the ID string always starts with a blank, collowed by 5 capital letters that are characteristic for the file. When the ID string is not correct, OpenMaXwell will display a warning while reading. Note that the file version number does usually not coincide with the OpenMaXwell version number because the file version number is only increased when additional data is added to the file.
New versions of OpenMaXwell should be able to read in all OpenMaXwell ASCII files written with older versions of OpenMaXwell as well as files written by MaX-1. When some data is missing in an ASCII file, OpenMaXwell either uses current data or inserts default values.
When OpenMaXwell displays a warning while reading an ASCII file, you may let OpenMaXwell continue reading, but you should inspect the corresponding dialogs to make sure that no undesired values were read.
In addition to the ASCII text files, OpenMaXwell can write AVI movie files and read and write Bitmap files. Since OpenMaXwell cannot read AVI movie files, you need a movie player for watching movies generated by OpenMaXwell.
Responsible for this web page: Ch. Hafner, Computational Optics Group, IEF, ETH, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Last update
17.02.2014