Antenna Radiation Diagram Plotter

Design and test phases of an ambitious project are nowadays enhanced and provide more accuracy when done on a computer. For instance, with the help of applications like Antenna Radiation Diagram Plotter you can view the amount and spread of EM radiations coming from an antenna, so you can find the right spot to place it.

One advantage is that the application doesn’t take you through the effort of pressing a few Next buttons to install, which means you can even use it from other computers by running it directly from an USB flash drive. System registries are not tampered with, keeping your computer’s health status intact.

The visual design leaves a bit more to be desired. It’s not just because of the classic window style, but resizing the main window hides important elements, without options to scroll. Moreover, it can be a bit confusing at times, and there’s no documentation included or tutorial to get you up and running. On the other hand, you can find a sample file to get an idea of how and what data needs to be added.

Several tabs provide quick navigation through files, data, and plot. The first relies on info collected from either TXT or DAT files you need to load, with up to three distinctive slots. This makes comparison easy, especially because of options to set plot color and style for each inserted file.

Apart from files, the application gives you the possibility to load external programs with two parameter slots in case you want to use generated data in other projects or tools. A few options are available for the plot itself, such as maximum value to show, decibel span, and individual statistics for files you load.

Data grabbed from the resources you provide is shown in the second tab. These can’t be edited and are only used to show you values for each antenna angle. Once you’re done loading and analyzing data, pressing Plot instantly creates it according to your specifications. Shown in a separate tab, it can even be exported as a BMP file.

All things considered, we come to the conclusion that Antenna Radiation Diagram Plotter may leave a bit more to be desired, at least in terms of visuals, but provides a decent amount of options with which to gather data, compare, and get a visual representation which can be saved to file. In case you’re building your own antenna, this application might just come in handy.