Copying and Stacking Wires

When drawing a wire structure, it is often necessary to copy wires from one position to another. An antenna array is an example of such a scenario. To copy wires, you must first select them by pressing the Selection Box button on the toolbar and then expanding a box using the mouse to enclose the wires you wish to copy, as explained in the Moving, Rotating and Scaling Wires section.

In the Edit menu, you will find the following commands for copying the selected wires:

Copy Wires

Displays the Copy Wires dialog box for copying the selected wire or group of wires (Fig. 1). You can specify the number of copies of the selected group of wires. The first copy will be offset from the original wire group according to the entered X, Y, and Z offsets and/or rotated around each axis according to the entered angles. Subsequently, each copy will be offset and/or rotated relative to the previous copy.

Stack Wires

Displays the Stack Wires dialog box for stacking the selected wire or group of wires along the specified direction and according to the given number of elements in the stack (Fig. 2). An “element” in the stack is composed of the selected wires, so an element could be a single wire or a group of wires. You must also specify the spacing between the elements.