PCB PARASITIC INDUCTANCE

ANALYSIS USING ANSYS Q3D

Dharini Parthasarathy
Updated by : Nick Wolford

Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Miami University,

Oxford, Ohio, parthad@miamioh.edu wolfornd@miamioh.edu

Rev. 2.01 June 30, 2017 p.1

 TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE NUMBER

Section 1: Release Project in CircuitMaker 3

Section 2: Altium Designer 6

Section 3: Exporting as a DXF file 9

Section 4: Importing DXF file into Q3D 11

Section 5: Creating the 3D Model 13

Section 6: Nets and Excitations 24

Section 7: Reducing Matrices 27

Section 8: Creating a Solution Setup 29

Section 9: Analysis Considerations and Meshing Operations 32

Section 10: High Performance Computing Options and Setup 34

Section 11: Validation and Analysis 37

Section 12: Results 38

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 Section 1: Release Project in CircuitMaker
If you have created your schematic and PCB in CircuitMaker, there are certain
steps you need to take in order to import the file into Q3D. The first of these steps
is to Release your Project. A Released Project is a snapshot collection of all files
in the Project, and includes a choice of generated output files such as
schematic/PCB printouts, part lists (BOM), fabrication and assembly files, etc.
The files are bundled as a unique revision of the Project, stored as a single ZIP
files, and preserved in the Community Vault as a named and date-stamped
revision of the Project. To Release you Project:

1. Open and Login to CircuitMaker.

2. Open your Project.

3. Click on Open Design.

4. Click on Project > Release Project.

5. Place a check next to all the Outputers you want, and then click on Release.

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6. Click on Components & Releases on your Project.

7. Under Releases, you will see the Project you released. Download the released
Project.

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8. Rename and Save the Project in a directory of your choice.

In this downloaded Project folder, the PCBs will be saved as CMPcbDoc files. To
import these into Q3D, they need to be saved as DXF files. For this conversion,
you will need Altium Designer.

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 Section 2: Altium Designer
In this section, we will open the CMPcbDoc file that was the Released output
from CircuitMaker in Altium Designer.

1. Open Altium Designer.

2. Click on File > New > PCB.

3. Click on File > Import > Altium PCB.

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4. Navigate to the folder you downloaded from CircuitMaker, and then into the
Design Folder.

5. Open the CMPcbDoc file that contains your PCB layout.

6. Edit the PCB.

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Here, we are testing the gate drive loop of this PCB. So, it is edited down until
only the traces that are a part of this loop remain. The more traces and pieces that
you leave in, the more accurate that your simulation may be, though if there are
very skinny or oddly shaped pieces it may cause the simulation to be less accurate
or fail later on.
Optionally, you can wait until you import the file into Q3D to edit it down
to the essential components, however this may take longer due to the greater
number of objects that Q3D will create during the import process.

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 Section 3: Exporting as a DXF file
Once the PCB has been edited to only include the traces and components that are
a part of the loop under analysis, we will export the PCB as a DXF file.

1. Click on File > Export > DXF/DWG.

2. Rename and Save the export in a directory of your choice.

3. Select the proper format for the export and click OK.

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Rev. 2.01 June 30, 2017 p.10
 Section 4: Importing DXF File into Q3D
1. Open Q3D

2. Click on Project > Insert Q3D Extractor Design.

3. Click on Modeler > Import.

4. Navigate to the DXF file you exported from Altium Designer and Open that
file.

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5. Place a check next to everything except the overlays, the solders, the
mechanical layers, and the multilayer, and click OK.

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 Section 5: Creating the 3D Model

Subsection 1: Changing the Units

When the model is imported into Q3D, its units are in mm. For the purposes of
the analysis, we need to change it to mils:

1. Click on Modeler > Units.

2. Select mils in the drop-down menu.

3. Check Rescale to New Units and click Done.

Subsection 2: Editing the Layers

Changing Materials:

Most of the layers and parts in the model are made of copper. However,
there are certain layers, such as the Core and the Pre-preg layers that are
made of FR4_Epoxy. All parts of the model import in without an assigned
material. To assign the material for an object:

1. Select all the objects you want to assign as a particular material, right
click and click Properties.

2. Under Material, select Copper, and click Done.

Scaling and Moving the Board:

When the model is imported, the different layers and parts are
superimposed on one another. Because of that, we must appropriately
scale and move the different objects. Given below the scaling and moving
sub-sections are the layouts for 2-layer and 4-layer boards. When you
scale and move the layers of your board, you will have to refer to the
layouts given after these two sections.

Scaling:

1. Open your PCB layout in Altium Designer.

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 2. Measure the edges of your layout and make a note of them.

3. Go back to your Q3D design.

4. Right-click and click on Select Edges.

5. Right-click and click on Measure > Edge.

6. Measure the edges of the imported layout and compare with the
measurements from the original PCB layout.

7. To change the measurements of the import to reflect the PCB layout,

select the objects you want to scale.

8. Right click and then select Edit > Scale.

9. Change the X, Y, and Z scales.

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Moving:

Usually Q3D will name the parts in the different layers in a procedural
manner, ie: TopLayer_*** where the asterisks are a unique number for the layer.
As a quality of life improvement, select all of the parts that belong to a particular
layer, and right click > group > create. This will create a group of the parts that
you can select to refer to all of the parts in a layer at one time. This will make it a
lot easier to create the model correctly, and make it a lot less likely that you will
accidentally misalign a piece in model reassembly. You will also be able to select
a layer and right click > view > show only selection to view only the layer(s) that
are most useful for your editing.

1. Select the group or objects you want to move.

2. Right-click and select Edit > Arrange > Move. (or click the move tool
in the toolbar at the top)

3. Click on the object again.

4. Press Tab to take you down to where you can input how much you
want to move the object in the X, Y, and Z directions.

5. Input the number you want, and hit Enter.

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 a. After selecting the object(s) you can draw a vector in the model
window that will move the objects by that vector instead.
Depending on your model and what you are trying to do this
may or may not save you time calculating the distances to
move.
6. Continue until all the objects are where you want.

Given below are the two layouts for 2-layer and 4-layer boards as a reference for
the space that should be left between the layers in your board:

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Subsection 3: Altering Unnecessary Parts

Almost all of the editing that will need to be done will be done through boolean
operations within Q3D. The modelling system is based on using primitive or
existing objects to edit other touching or overlapping objects to create complex
models useful to simulation. All Boolean operations are performed in basically
the same way.

1. Select all the objects you want to unite.

2. Click on Modeler (or right click on an object) > Boolean > *Operation*.

The boolean operations that are most useful to the editing process for PCBs is
Unite and Subtract. Uniting two overlapping objects will delete any overlapping

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material between the two and removes any faces between them, making them one
object. To understand subtraction, you need to understand how tool parts work
within Q3D. When a subtraction is done there is a part that you are doing the
subtraction, the blank part, and then another tool or victim part. Once you
subtract, any overlap between the two parts will be removed from the volume of
the main part, and typically the tool part is deleted. Most of the time when you are
doing subtraction for the PCB traces, you do not want to get rid of the tool part, so
make sure that the subtraction part is in the left box, and tool parts are in the right
box, and that the clone tool parts box is checked at the bottom so that the tool
parts will remain after the subtraction.

The main goal of this step is to make sure that:

Each layer does not have any overlapping regions
overlapping regions will cause your model to not verify and not
simulate
The import process will create many extra overlapping objects that
together constitute the shapes you imported.
Important pad/via locations are not removed
pad/via locations will also be represented by overlapping objects.
pad/vias must be modeled as separate objects to ensure that there is
a face in the right place when excitations are defined later

To accomplish this you need to do two main things to your model. First identify
all of the shape pieces that just make up the shape of your traces. Then unite all of
those pieces so that you are left with traces with only pads that are overlapping.
Then subtract all of the pads/vias from the traces they are a part of, and remember
to clone tool parts. None of this need be done all at once, it is often easier to just
work your way through a few pieces at a time. Note that holding control and
clicking on the pieces you are interested in is often the simplest way to select the
pieces you want.

At any point you can hit the validate button on the toolbar at the top. Everything
will eventually need a check here, but for the modelling process this is the first
time that the 3D model should validate. It may be a good idea to periodically
check this to make sure you have not invalidated your model.

Now vias need to be added to your model if they were not included initially. This
may vary somewhat depending on your particular geometry, however one of the
easiest ways is to extrude the face of one of the placeholder disks to the plane it
goes to. If you have done the last step correctly, you should have disks in your
layers where the vias start and end. Look at the internal face of the disk, hit f to
enable face selection mode, and click on the internal face to select it.

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right click > Edit > Surface > Create Object from Face
This will create a 2D sheet on the face of the disk where you want it to extend into
a via. Select this new 2D sheet in your model panel on the left, and right click >
edit > sweep > along Vector . This will now bring up the vector drawing panel. In
the window get the selection point to snap to the middle or the side of the face,
click, and then click again on the corresponding spot on the disk that the via
should go to. If all goes correctly a cylinder should be created between the two
disks that end the via.

It may be beneficial to unite the two end disks with the internal cylinder, to cut
down on part count and save time avoiding the extra mesh that would be created
in the disks. Once you have created all of the vias that will be necessary for the
PCB that you are modelling, it is a good idea to check the 3D model validation to
make sure that you still have a valid model.

Subsection 4: Adding the FR_4 Layers

1. Create the middle layers (the Core and Prepreg layers) of the board using
the Draw > Box command. To begin with you can create the box with
arbitrary sides since you will be immediately changing them to the correct
dimensions. Depending on your board, you may find that you want to
draw in the layers separately, or as one large box. If the layers are all the
same material, It should not matter as Q3D will treat the boundaries
between adjacent objects the same. Doing separate objects will cause there
to be more tetrahedrons created in the meshing process, so this may slow
down your initial solution passes.

2. Right-click on the box to change its properties: assign the material to be

FR_4 epoxy, and change the dimensions to completely cover the space
around the layers. right click > edit > properties will bring up the menu
that will allow you to change the material of the box. You may need to
scroll through the list to find FR_4 or the material of your choice. To
change the size of the box you have created find your box object in your
model object window, expand it by clicking the + box, and double click

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 on CreateBox to open the window to edit the size and position of the box.

a. Because of the way that the trace geometry is imported from your
file, there can be complications in the meshing step when you try
to simulate later on. It is possible for a model to verify, but then
fail meshing once the simulation begins, under certain
circumstances based on the imported geometry. By making the
FR4 layer completely engulf the traces on all sides (ie: make the
FR4 layer ~1 mil larger in all dimensions than the edges of the
traces), you can sometimes avoid some of these meshing mistakes.
This may not be appropriate for all geometries and designs, but
may also avoid complicated errors for cases where it is less
important. If you are have a validated model, and are getting errors
and this is not appropriate/does not solve the problem when you
analyse, you need to manually address the problem. This is more
complicated than the scope of this guide but you can start by
clicking Modeler>Model Analysis>Show Analysis Dialog> Last
Simulation Mesh to see the individual meshing errors from the last
simulation attempt.

3. In this layout, the via and the FR_4 layer occupy the same space. So, we
must subtract one from the other. This is similar to the subtraction

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 operations that were done when you were healing the imported model.

4. Click on FR_4 and the via. As long as your model is not ridiculously
complex, there is not really a downside to selecting all objects for the
subtraction operation at the same time. Doing this will ensure that you
dont forget about anything that may be overlapping with the dielectric
layer you just created.

5. Click on Modeler > Boolean > Subtract.

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 6. Verify that FR_4 is under Blank Parts, and that the via is under Tool Parts.

7. Check Clone tool objects before operation.

8. Click OK.

Subsection 5: Validating the 3D Model

1. Click on Q3D Extractor > Validation Check.

2. Verify that you have a green check mark against 3D Model.

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 Section 6: Nets and Excitations
A Net is a collection of touching conductor objects separated by non-conducting
materials or by the background material.

Sources and Sinks are excitations assigned to each net, which are sometimes
needed to generate solutions for the analysis of parasitics. To generate a
capacitance solution, you do not need to assign any Sources or Sinks. However,
for resistive or inductive solutions, any net that you want to include in the matrix
solution must have at least one Source defined, and a single Sink. Attached to
each Source is an independent current source. The Sink collects all the current
injected at the Sources and allows it to flow out of the conductor and back into the
independent current sources, completing the electrical circuit. Imagine that the
current enters the trace at the Source and leaves at the Sink.

Subsection 1: Assigning a Source

1. Right-click and click on Select Faces.

2. Select the face you want to assign as a source.

3. Right-click and select Assign Excitation.

4. Select Source.

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5. Rename the Source if you wish to, and then click OK.

Subsection 2: Assigning a Sink

1. Right-click and click on Select Faces (if you have not already done so).

2. Select the face you want to assign as a sink.

3. Right-click and select Assign Excitation.

4. Select Sink.

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5. Rename the Sink if you wish to, and then click OK.

Subsection 3: Identifying Nets

If you have two conducting objects touching each other, Q3D treats them as one
combined object. Q3D can auto identify nets by finding these touching
conductors.

1. Right-click and select Auto-Identify Nets

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 Section 7: Reducing Matrices
When you generate a solution in Q3D, a row and column is generated for each
Net in the capacitance matrix, and a row and column is generated for each Source
in the resistive and inductive matrices. You can modify these matrices to generate
different solutions by using the Reduced Matrix option.

For our analysis, we will be measuring the inductance in a loop of traces. The Join
in Series option for reduction allow you to connect the Sink terminals of one or
more conductors (or Nets) to the Source terminal of another conductor. Then,
these conductors are treated as a single Net. There are also certain traces where
we will have two or more Sources that contribute equally to the current in the
trace. The Join in Parallel option for reduction allows you to connect these
Sources in parallel. These Source terminals are then treated as a single object.

Subsection 1: Join in Series

1. Expand Reduced Matrix in the Project Manager Window.

2. Right-click on Original and select Join In Series.

3. Select a Sink terminal from one Net and a Source terminal from another, to
connect these Nets together.

4. Enter a name in the New Net Name box.

5. Click Apply, and then click OK.

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6. Repeat steps 1-5 until the loop is formed. Here, you will have to select the
Reduced Matrix you created instead of the Original matrix to add to the loop.

Subsection 2: Join in Parallel

1. Expand Reduced Matrix in the Project Manager Window.

2. Right-click on the last Reduced Matrix you created and select Join In Parallel.

3. Select two or more Source terminals to connect in parallel.

4. Enter the New Net Name, the New Source Name, and the New Sink name.

5. Click Apply, and then click OK.

After you have performed all the operations you need, you can delete all the
matrices except for the last one, and rename the last one into something of your
choice.

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 Section 8: Creating a Solution Setup
For the Solution Setup, you will need to specify the frequency at which you want
to generate the solution. Q3D computes resistance and inductance solutions for
both DC and AC problems. Depending on the frequency of the analysis, either the
DC or AC solution is valid, and you will need to determine which of the two is
valid for your frequency to obtain accurate results.

In the DC frequency region, both resistance and inductance are nearly constant
with frequency. In the AC frequency region, the inductance is nearly constant
with frequency, while the resistance increases in proportion to the square root of
the frequency. The AC self-inductance is lower than the DC value because of skin
effects. However, these effects modify the skin depth of the conductor, reducing
the effecting cross section of current flow, and increasing the resistance.

Subsection 1: AC or DC region

1. Determine the region your solution frequency is in.

The range of frequencies that are in the AC region is given by the following
formula:

f d29
0 r

Here,
is the conductors conductivity in S/m.
d is the thickness of the conductor in m.
0 is the permeability of free space, which is 4107 Wb/Am
r is the conductors relative permeability.

The range of frequencies that are in the AC region is given by the following
formula:

f d21
0 r

Here,
is the conductors conductivity in S/m.
d is the thickness of the conductor in m.

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 0 is the permeability of free space, which is 4107 Wb/Am
r is the conductors relative permeability.

The different frequency regions:

After you have determined which solution, AC or DC, is valid for your solution
frequency, you can create the Solution Setup.

Subsection 2: Creating a Solution Setup

1. Right-click on Analysis and select Add Solution Setup.

2. Leave the default name of the Setup, or enter a new name.

3. Enter the solution frequency in the appropriate box.

4. Place a check next to the solutions you wish to find. Depending on your
solution frequency, and the corresponding region, select either AC or DC in the
Solution Selection box.

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5. Click OK.

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 Section 9: Analysis Considerations and Meshing
Operations

When Q3D simulates your model in the adaptive pass mode, as it usually
will, the first step is to create a mesh for your model. It is somewhat of a complex
process, but basically the software will break your model down into tetrahedral
pieces that it solves for fields within and at the boundaries with neighboring
tetrahedrons. Q3D will create an initial mesh, and then for further passes, it will
refine the mesh, breaking the most important tetrahedrons down further into
multiple more tetrahedrons, to improve the accuracy of the solution further.
Because it is the basis of the solution method, your mesh is integral to the
accuracy and representation of your model in the final solution that Q3D creates.
The meshing algorithm will naturally create a lot of tetrahedrons in small,
intricate pieces, as well as on curved surfaces, so that the mesh will correctly
represent the model.
This can be good or bad, depending on the situation. If too fine a mesh is
created in an unimportant place, then a lot of solution time will be added while the
program solves for values in relatively insignificant places. If the mesh is too
coarse then it can potentially be inaccurate and/or miss essential geometry
features.
The most general way that you can work with these mesh operations is to just
specify the fineness to fit your model and the results that you are trying to get. To do this
go to the Mesh Operations icon in the project manager right click > Initial Mesh Settings
. There are a lot of specific settings you can tweak if you go into the manual mode, but
just using the slider provided works pretty well for the majority of cases.

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 The most common place that your mesh will be too fine is on curves on
your traces or on your vias due to the meshing software trying to accurately
represent the curves. Because it will try to accurately represent the curves by
default very accurately on the first mesh approximation, the vias and other curves
may be overrepresented in the mesh that is created first. This will cause the
simulation to be slower on all passes and make it take longer to converge. Often
the perfectly circular nature of the geometry is not as important as the
compromise in performance. One way you could deal with this is to change the
geometry to be more simple not true surfaces, but you can often get around this by
doing equivalent approximations using specific mesh operations for those
vias/curves that are troublesome. If the suspect regions turn out to be important to
the current flow and result accuracy then they will be refined in subsequent passes
anyway.
First select all of the vias/objects that you want to make coarser. Then go
the mesh operations tab in the project manager. right click > assign > surface
approximation. This will bring up a similar slider to the one that you would see
under the initial mesh settings. Drag this far to the leftmost few notches to apply
this to the selected objects, and click apply. This can save a lot of time both in
simulation and/or in trying to reshape an unwieldy imported geometry.

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 Section 10: High Performance Computing
Options and Setup
For many industry applications it is assumed that you will be running
very large simulations on clusters of computers or at least very fast and expensive
machines. For all of these cases high performance computing options need to be
defined to be able to take advantage of the hardware at hand. By default ansys
products only simulate using one core of the machine you are using. On fairly
normal machines like the ones in most labs at miami that have Q3D this can be
extremely limiting if you do not know how to change the setting to take advantage
of what resources you do have. Running Q3D on only one core of a machine will
lead to very long simulation times and low resource utilization at best.
For most computers here at miami all we can do in the high performace
options is to allow Q3D to be able to use all four (usually) cores of the machine
we are on. To do this first click on the High Performace Computing and Analysis
options button on the top of the toolbar.

This will bring up the following box that you can then use to change the HPC
options.

Hit Edit in the middle of the screen and change the field that says number
of cores to four so that it looks like the following picture.

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Hit OK to return to the HPC menu and navigate to the options tab at the top of the
screen. Under the HPC Licensing heading, change the type from what probably says
None by default to Pool so that it looks like the picture below, and then click ok.

High performance computing options require separate ansys licenses to enable.

The educational version of ansys that is in use at the time of writing includes the pool
option that we need to enable multiple cores.

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 The Pack option is not a license that we currently have, but is what you would
use if you were going to run the simulation on a cluster of computers. Cluster setup is
outside the scope of this tutorial.

If at simulation run time, the program errors for a reason related to licensure, then
the most likely cause is that your version of ansys does not have the required license
(pool/pack) for the HPC settings that you have selected. Returning the core number to 1
and the license type to None should allow you to run your simulation, albeit slowly.

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 Section 11: Validation and Analysis
Before you perform the analysis, you will need to validate the Setup. To do this:

1. Click on Q3d Extractor > Validation Check.

2.Verify that you have a green check mark against every operation. If you have a
red cross or a yellow warning, fix any errors before continuing.
3. Under Analysis in the Project Manager window, right-click on Setup 1, then
select Analyze.

If you are running a simulation for the first time on a new geometry, or
with more taxing settings, it may be a good idea to keep an eye on the resource
monitoring section of your task manager. The most common cause of
performance issues that have been run into as of writing this is for the RAM
utilization to exceed the cap that is set for Q3D. You can change this RAM cap in
the HPC options if it is necessary, but the default 90% is pretty good. If the Q3D
simulation exceeds the RAM cap, you will be able to see on the resource monitor.
If this happens then the simulation will begin to page virtual memory on your
hard drive, your drive utilization will likely rise to 100% and your computer will
appear to grind to a halt. Technically if you leave the simulation long enough it
will finish, but if this happens it is definitely the best course of action to stop it
and change some settings and try again.
The most common cause of this is that mesh creation creates too many
tetrahedrons for your machine to handle. There are a couple things that you can
try to remedy this.
If the simulation crashes after a couple passes in a simulation, but
was fine before, you can likely leave your settings as they were,
and reduce the number of passes, or the percent refinement per
pass, or increase the goal percent error in the analysis setup. This
will reduce the maximum number of tetrahedrons that the
simulation will produce after refining the mesh each pass.
Use mesh operations to either deprioritize less important areas of
your model, or change your initial mesh settings to be more coarse
in general. Both of these will lower the resolution of the mesh and
possibly the result, but may lower the tetrahedron count enough for
the simulation to run.
If none of the above work, then you may need to simulate a less
complicated model. Either strip away small and unimportant parts,
or change complex geometries into more simple representations.
The more simple the design, the less regions will be created so you
may be able to then run the simulation.

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 Section 12: Results
1. Under Analysis in the Project Manager window, right-click on Setup 1, then
select Matrix.

2. Select DC or AC analysis.

3. Select your Reduced Matrix. The inductance is the second number reported in
the units selected in the inductance units box. If more than one cell shows up here
then either your initial source/sink placement has extra paths, or your reduce
matrix does not reduce all of the sources/sinks to one path.

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