NAME

  necview - a program to view antennas

SYNOPSIS

  necview

DESCRIPTION

Necview is based on P.T. de Boer's (pa3fwm@amsat.org/ptdeboer@cs.utwente.nl)
xnecview program (which is written in C), and borrows very heavily from that
program. This program is written in Perl/Tk, and utilizes color and sliders to
animate 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

Necview is able to read data lines of either form and provide a graphic
representation of the antenna.  Each element of the antenna is colored
differently, and the structure can be "rotated" in several directions by the use
of "sliders".

Necview reads the same data files that NEC2 does, but the only data lines of
interest to necview are the lines which begin with "GW" or "GR" (as of July 25,
1999).  necview 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.  The user's
view of the antenna can be varied by using the sliders provided.  As a slider is
moved with the mouse the antenna will appear to "rotate" in the window,
affording differing views of the same antenna.

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

Necview 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), Wires.pl (W5GFE), Elevation.pl (W5GFE), Azimuth.pl (W5GFE) 

