Enabling/Disabling Resistivity

In AN-SOF, you can globally control whether the software accounts for metallic losses or treats the entire structure as a Perfect Electric Conductor (PEC). This is a powerful feature for benchmarking, as it allows you to quickly compare the idealized performance of your antenna against its real-world performance with ohmic losses.

How to Toggle Resistivity

Instead of manually editing every wire in your model, use the global toggle:

1. Navigate to the Setup tab in the main AN-SOF window.
2. Locate the Settings panel (Fig. 1).
3. To Enable Losses: Check the Wire Resistivity box. AN-SOF will now use the specific resistivity values (e.g., for copper or aluminum) you assigned to each wire in the Draw dialog.
4. To Disable Losses: Uncheck the Wire Resistivity box. The software will ignore all individual wire resistivity settings and treat every conductor as having zero resistance (PEC).

Why Use This Toggle?

• Efficiency Analysis: Running a simulation twice, once with resistivity enabled and once without, provides a clearer understanding of how ohmic losses affect the antenna’s radiation efficiency.
• Troubleshooting: If your antenna’s gain is lower than expected, disabling resistivity helps you determine if the issue is due to high ohmic losses or poor impedance matching.
• Fast Prototyping: Use the PEC (disabled) setting during the initial design phase to speed up optimization before adding the complexity of skin-effect losses.