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Working with Touchstone Files

A Touchstone file is a standard file format used by vector network analyzers to store measurement results. I have a customer at one of our national laboratories who regularly needs to import Touchstone files for data visualization. It is a very cumbersome process currently as she first uses s-parameters in MATLAB to convert to a format that can be brought into JMP. It is very likely that we may have many in laboratory environments who could benefit from a better way to import .snP files directly. I amcurious if there are others who have run into this question.

 

For more information on Touchstone files, the link below provides a great deal of information:

https://www.kirkbymicrowave.co.uk/Support/FAQ/What-is-a-Touchstone-file/

Re: Working with Touchstone Files

I have not heard of this type of file, but from what I can tell, they are ASCII and the format is relatively straightforward. Would be a nice JSL project for someone. Do you have additional examples?

Re: Working with Touchstone Files

Unfortunately, the files my customer references are sensitive in nature and cannot be shared. I have asked if there is a generic example that can be found to share. I will post as I receive one.

Re: Working with Touchstone Files

Do you mean to say that they are actually something like a CSV file but with a unique filename extension? So if a script iterated over the files, they could be imported directly afterward? Or the parsing would still require scripting?

Re: Working with Touchstone Files

I think you'd have to do some parsing of the file. The file parameters are at the link Rob gave.

Re: Working with Touchstone Files

Hi Rob,

I'll try and take a crack at it.  I'll post a version here shortly.

 

Stan

Re: Working with Touchstone Files

Hi @statpharmer,

I collaborated with @brady_brady to create the Touchstone file importer, aka, sNp data.

Attached are some example files that I put together from the Touchstone spec and some other searches.

 

Not sure what is allowed for harvesting example data off the internet so internal use only.

 

cheers,

Stan

Re: Working with Touchstone Files

Wow! Thanks to you and Brady for putting this together. I plan to create a virtual meeting with my customer to go through it and get feedback. I will let you know how it goes. Thanks so much!  

Re: Working with Touchstone Files

Greetings Stan,

 

I believe that the great add-in you and Brady created may be useful for many of our customers in Federal labs. Thanks for posting in the community for public consumption and for your time. We plan to share the link with many in the coming week.

 

Rob

Re: Working with Touchstone Files

The add-in works great for our customer; however, they noted that instruments from Agilent Technologies save the files with upper case characters "*.S4P" in the suffix creating an error. It can be overcome by renaming the file prior to upload, which is a bit tedious if working with many files in a day. Is there an easy way to code in the flexibility to read in suffixes that have either lower or upper case suffixes?

Re: Working with Touchstone Files

Hi Rob,

Yes it is a simple change.

I'll post the updated add-in to the file exchange today.

 

Stan

Re: Working with Touchstone Files

Rob,

The new version has been posted to the file exchange.

cheers,

Stan

Re: Working with Touchstone Files

I just had a conversation with the engineer who first posed the question about Touchstone files. He is absolutely thrilled with the add-in and plans to use it regularly for visualization of data from several test runs. He commented that he was blown away by the amount of support offered to a new JMP user! Folks like you and Brady make the entire JMP team analysis support heros for our customers every day! Thanks again.