Circuit => Brick Materials

Project Editor Menu - Circuit Menu - Brick Materials dialog box

Stackup Manager

A dielectric brick is a solid volume of dielectric material embedded within a circuit layer and can be used to simulate structures such as a dielectric resonator block in an ''air'' circuit layer, or an "air hole" in a dielectric substrate circuit layer.

You select Circuit => Brick Materials to open the Brick Materials dialog box which allows you to define the characteristics of brick materials for use in your circuit. The default brick material is Air; this is defined for all the Project Editor files. All brick materials may be used on all levels and with different polygons on the same level. A brick material specifies the dielectric constant, loss tangent and bulk conductivity used by em, and whether the dielectric is isotropic or anisotropic. Since the dielectric parameters are unrelated to the level on which a polygon is located, changing the brick material of a polygon does not change the physical location of the polygon. It changes only the dielectric parameters. You may use variables to define characteristics of your dielectric material. This dialog box may also be opened by selected "Brick Materials" from the main pop-up menu in the Stackup Manager.

A list of presently defined dielectrics for this project appears in this dialog box. All geometry files initially contain the default brick material, Air. This brick material is isotropic with an Erel value of 1.0, a dielectric loss tangent of zero, and dielectric conductivity of zero. You may not edit this dielectric. Air is also the default dielectric used for all new bricks when a project is created. If you wish to use another dielectric as the default dielectric for new bricks, select another dielectric from the Default for Add Bricks drop list. Click on a dielectric in the list to select it.

Default for Add Bricks: Select the dielectric you wish to use for all new bricks in your circuit. This does not change the dielectric used for any existing polygons, but any dielectric bricks added to your circuit after this will use the selected dielectric. The default dielectric used for new projects is Air.

Add: Click on the button to open the Dielectric Editor dialog box which allows you to define a new dielectric material.

Edit: Click on this button to edit the selected dielectric material in the dielectric list to the left. The Dielectric Editor dialog box is opened displaying the present parameters of the dielectric. You may edit the name and attributes of the dielectric in this dialog box.

Remove: Click on this button to remove the selected dielectric in the dielectric list from your project.

For more details on defining loss for a dielectric brick, see How do I specify loss in a dielectric brick?