I agree with this assessment. While not designing antennas commercially, I’ve used many equivalents to EZNEC that are cobbled together from NEC2 and graphical front ends and back ends. If you look around there are many such apps. Here’s a random example, though I haven’t used it at all. https://www.qsl.net/4nec2/ There is also a C++ NEC2 translation with some new features. It almost certainly is faster than the original, and perhaps what EZNEC was using as its computational engine. I’ve only used this C++ version and it appears to work very well. https://github.com/tmolteno/necpp They all carry the flaws of NEC2 with them, like no realistic ground model and no mesh or planar conductors. NEC4 is becoming abandonware. As mentioned, FEKO is state of the art. There are many other commercial packages with plusses and minuses based on how they compute the solutions to Maxwell’s Equations. But they’re expensive. FEKO used to have a free license tier, but I can’t find it now. Anyway, EZNEC is convenient for hams and that’s its value. If the source were available, it would be a nice thing™. But IMO it’s not a must-have. Things will likely emerge to replace it. And it might be easy to translate EZNEC files to standard NEC input files, which are just CSV. I find it very annoying when source files are available that rely on a particular commercial product, particularly when that product only supports one OS platform. Providing those specialized files is fine as a convenience, but it should be accompanied with more generic alternatives. Just my $0.02.
On Jul 13, 2021, at 9:24 AM, Fred Hopengarten <hopengarten@post.harvard.edu> wrote:
I have a client in the antenna design business. He writes:
EZNEC is a toy program, using free NEC versions developed by LLNL (NEC4 is expensive however). All EZNEC does is add a GUI shell on top of the NEC program. So no one should buy the (copy) rights from Lewallen, whose only 'right' is on a GUI that someone has to maintain. If allowed to go into the public domain, then enough hackers will themselves keep the GUI going and, indeed, improve it.
Let it die. Others will pick it up in their own version thereafter.
Please understand that this discussion is way beyond my personal ability to contribute meaningfully to the conversation. But I thought the opinion of a knowledgeable person might be useful for the discussion.
Fred Hopengarten, Esq. K1VR Six Willarch Road Lincoln, MA 01773 781.259.0088, k1vr@arrl.org <mailto:k1vr@arrl.org>
New England Director <image001.png> Serving ME, NH, VT, MA, RI and CT
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