Dimensioning a Permanent Magnet

Something like this?

If FEA is involved I am not surprised that the answer can be quite a different one every time you ask the question this.

I like to spec mine by Length x Height x Width by N number and lastly pole configuration myself but I do know there are others who prefer to put pole configuration N number before the LHW or LWH or HWL or HLW or WHL or WLH numbers.

Then there are the metric spec guys but that's a whole different dimensioning topic as far as I am concerned.

A class each in geometry and mechanical drawing might help....

My opinion is that you need to do some more independent research.

Have you contacted any magnet suppliers to see what the current technology is?

Give your sources and then we could make comments. As for the FEA comment I had an example which proves the contrary: I used 3 soft packages (one which is free, one which costs a LOT of money and a medium cost one) results were within a few percent equal. The only difference was that the "free" soft was only 2D and the very expensive 3D.

Basically you have to define the field in the working gap considering all parasitic gaps and the parallel fields in order to determine as function of magnetic material the length and the area of the permanent magnet. The most difficult part is -when you do not use FEA- the estimation of parallel fields. You can find all what you need in an old but still good book written by Rotters about 70 tears ago. Maxwell's laws and equations are still the same. The book gives all information how to compute parallel looses (without FEA!) and thus determine the magnet transverse area.

I made for may pleasure a test many years ago computing a circuit by hand and with help of a 2D FEA differences were under 10%.