Extras Plugin 🎁

Extras Plugin 🎁#

tidy3d-extras is an optional plugin for Tidy3D providing additional, more advanced local functionality. This additional functionality includes a more accurate local mode solver with subpixel averaging.

Installation#

Simply go to tidy3d.simulation.cloud and sign up for an account. From there, just load our web GUI (no installation required) or continue with the next steps for the Python interface.

tidy3d-extras is a python module that can be easily installed via pip. The version must match the version of Tidy3D, so the preferred command for installation is:

pip install "tidy3d[extras]"

This command will install tidy3d-extras and its dependencies in the current environment.

Important

tidy3d-extras is not compatible with Conda environments. Please use a standard Python virtual environment (e.g., venv or virtualenv) for installation.

A Tidy3D API key is required to authenticate tidy3d-extras users. If you don’t have one already configured, you can get a free API key and configure it with the following command:

tidy3d configure

On Windows, it is easier to use pipx to find the path to the configuration tool:

pip install pipx
pipx run tidy3d configure

More information about the installation and configuration of Tidy3D can be found here.

You can verify that the tidy3d-extras installation worked by running the following command to print the installed version:

python -c 'import tidy3d_extras as tde; print(tde.__version__)'

Usage#

Currently, tidy3d-extras provides the following features:

  • Local subpixel-averaged permittivity. This is what one would obtain with a PermittivityMonitor in an FDTD Simulation.

  • More accurate local mode solver with subpixel averaging.

By default, these features are automatically enabled if the tidy3d-extras package is installed. Thus to obtain subpixel-averaged permittivity, you can use functions like Simulation.epsilon. And the more accurate mode solver with subpixel averaging is used whenever the mode solver is run locally.

Sometimes, you may want to change this behavior, for example to speed up permittivity computation. In this case, you can temporarily disable these features by setting the config variable:

tidy3d.config.use_local_subpixel = False

This can also be set to True to ensure that subpixel averaging is used. You can check whether local subpixel averaging is turned on:

tidy3d.packaging.tidy3d_extras["use_local_subpixel"]

For a broader overview of configuration options and how they are stored, see Configuration Guide ⚙️.

Licenses#

Contents