[[Image:PMOM14.png|thumb|400px|A typical planar layered structure]]
EM.Picasso<sup>®</sup> is a versatile planar structure simulator for modeling and design of printed antennas, planar microwave circuits, and layered periodic structures. EM.Picasso's simulation engine is based on a 2.5-D full-wave Method of Moments (MoM) formulation that provides the ultimate modeling accuracy and computational speed for open-boundary multilayer structures. It can handle planar structures with arbitrary numbers of metal layouts, slot traces, vertical interconnects and lumped elements interspersed among different substrate layers.
Â
EM.Picasso assumes that your planar structure has a substrate (background structure) of infinite lateral extents. Your substrate can be a dielectric half-space, or a single conductor-backed dielectric layer (as in microstrip components or patch antennas), or simply the unbounded free space, or any arbitrary multilayer stack-up configuration. In the special case of a free space substrate, EM.Picasso behaves similar to [[EM.Libera]]'s Surface MoM simulator. In all the other cases, it is important to keep in mind the infinite extents of the background substrate structure. For example, you cannot use EM.Picasso to analyze a patch antenna with a finite-sized dielectric substrate, if the substrate edge effects are of concern in your modeling problem. [[EM.Tempo]] is recommended for the modeling of finite-sized substrates. Since EM.Picasso's Planar MoM simulation engine incorporates the Green's functions of the background structure into the analysis, only the finite-sized traces like microstrips and slots are discretized by the mesh generator. As a result, the size of EM.Picasso's computational problem is normally much smaller compared to the other techniques and solver. In addition, EM.Picasso generates a hybrid rectangular-triangular mesh of your planar structure with a large number of rectangular cells. This results in very fast computation times that oftentimes make up for the limited applications of EM.Picasso.
{{Note|EM.Picasso is the frequency-domain, full-wave '''[[Planar Module]]''' of '''[[EM.Cube]]''', a comprehensive, integrated, modular electromagnetic modeling environment. EM.Picasso shares the visual interface, 3D parametric CAD modeler, data visualization tools, and many more utilities and features collectively known as '''[[CubeCAD]]''' with all of [[EM.Cube]]'s other computational modules.}}
[[Image:Info_icon.png|40px]] Click here to learn more about the theory of '''[[Planar Method of Moments]]'''.
Â
=== Advantages & Limitations of Planar MoM Simulation ===
Â
EM.Picasso assumes that your planar structure has a substrate (background structure) of infinite lateral extents. Your substrate can be a dielectric half-space, or a single conductor-backed dielectric layer (as in microstrip components or patch antennas), or simply the unbounded free space, or any arbitrary multilayer stack-up configuration. In the special case of a free space substrate, EM.Picasso behaves similar to [[EM.Libera]]'s Surface MoM simulator. It is important to keep in mind the infinite extents of the background substrate structure. For example, you cannot use EM.Picasso to analyze a patch antenna with a finite-sized dielectric substrate, if the substrate edge effects are of concern in your modeling problem. [[EM.Tempo]] is recommended for the modeling of finite-sized substrates. Since EM.Picasso's Planar MoM simulation engine incorporates the Green's functions of the background structure into the analysis, only the finite-sized traces like microstrips and slots are discretized by the mesh generator. As a result, the size of EM.Picasso's computational problem is normally much smaller compared to the other techniques and solver. In addition, EM.Picasso generates a hybrid rectangular-triangular mesh of your planar structure with a large number of rectangular cells. This results in very fast computation times that oftentimes make up for the limited applications of EM.Picasso.
== Building a Planar Structure ==