Pic2Mag Changelog

What's new in Pic2Mag 1.5 Beta

• One of the big changes in the Pic2mag Beta v1.5 is that now the program is a bit more user friendly. I have had many emails from teachers asking for an easier way to run the program. Now if you double click the pic2mag executable 'pic2mag.exe', the program will prompt you for a png filename and then process the file with all the default options. The program and the png files have to be in the same directory. This will make it easier for students to save their magnetic image to the pic2mag directory and just double click an icon to process it. Have your IT person setup a directory on the desktop with all the files in it, and make a shortcut pointing to the program.
• The other change is that the previous version could only process eight xy plane magnetic moment directions {0,45,90,135,180,225,270,315} and the new beta can process 360 degrees of magnetic moment directions {0,1,2,3,...,359}. The location of the pixel in the image tells the pic2mag engine where each 1mm x 1mm x 1mm permanent magnet is located, and the color of the pixel tells the engine the direction of the magnetic moment.
• We added 360 colors to the program, and all the old colors stayed the same. Pic2Mag v1.5 is backward compatible with colors of Pic2Mag v1.3 but has a lot more colors available which are listed on the next pages. In most cases the additional colors will not be needed; for example a permanent magnet Halbach array can be processed quite well with the Pic2Mag v1.3 color set.
• A magnet configuration that requires the additional colors is a horseshoe magnet. You make a horseshoe magnet by having each magnetic moment pointing at the next magnetic moment till you have a half circle.
• Drawing a horseshoe magnet and processing it is not a trivial task. The author used matlab with the extended color table data to put the right colors in the right places. Email me and I will share my matlab scripts for making tangential rings and horseshoe magnets. A tangential ring magnet is made when you put two horseshoe magnets together, south to north and north to south.
• On the other hand, if you or your student needs a 213 degree magnetic moment to complete their magnetic array drawing; you are in the right place. Using the extended color table, look up the Red, Green, Blue values for 213 degrees and enter them into MS Paint to get the right color for that magnetic moment angle.
• To maintain backward compatibly, the angles are defined clockwise as 0 degrees is up, 90 degrees is to the right, 180 degrees is down and 270 degrees is to the left while looking at the screen image. When in doubt, put a small circle of the color in question on a blank image and process it.