Materials without magnetocrystalline anisotropy and internal imperfections are considered as ideally soft. Equilibrium magnetic configurations are determined from the competition between magnetostatic and exchange energies for given geometry and size. Approximate solutions have been found which show reversible nucleation processes, remanences, coercivities and critical fields at which irreversibilty occurs. The configurations in the irreversible portion of the magnetization process are found both for eddy current and for local (Gilbert) damping. The approximation used should permit one to follow in detail in an irreversible process those effects usually referred to as hysteresis loss, macro‐eddy‐current loss and micro‐eddy‐current loss.