transfering netlist to project with 2 designs

[Todc.18]

I have an ultiboard project with two board designs residing in it. I transfered a schematic/netlist from Multisim to the first of the designs successfully, but when I tried to transfer a different schematic/netlist to the 2nd design in the project, it wants to dump the 2nd netlist into the first design exclusively.I have tried repeatedly without success.

Am I trying to do something against the rules here, or should it be transfering to the 2nd design?  Thanks.

[GarretF]

Hi Tod,

I tried what you are describing in version 11 and it seems to work for me. Could you either attached the files or give me more details on how you created them and what exactly you are doing?

[Todc.18]

Thanks Garrett, I have attached the two schematics and the one board project with two designs in it. I'm using version 10.1.1, do you think version 11.0 would help me at all or is that irrellevant? Thanks, Tod

[GarretF · Accepted solution]

Thanks for attaching the files. That helped me figure out what is happening. Files in Multisim and design in Ultiboard have an identifier that should be unique, and annotation uses this identifier to figure out which file to annotate to. The problem is that the two Multisim files were created from the same original file, so the identifier is the same. In Ultiboard however, only the first design has the identifier, so annotation always selects the first design.

There are a few ways you can work around this, but the following will work best:

1. In Multisim, create a new file.
2. Copy the contents of 2210_Gb to the new file.
3. In the new file, click Transfer> Export to PCB Layout. Save the annotation file.
4. In Ultiboard, ensure that the 2210_Gb design is selected.
5. Click File > Import > UB Netlist. Select the annotation file, and finish the import.

The two designs should now have different identifiers, and everything should work as expected.

In this case, version 11.0 works the same way, but annotation was completely rewritten in 11.0, so in general, the version is important when talking about annotation issues. Version 11.0 also handles the case where the identifier is duplicated better, but in this particular case, it wouldn't have made a difference.

For interest sake, I initiallly figure out what was going on by looking at the exported annotation (ewnet) files from Multisim. The important line that showed what was happening was (crossprobe {1A3B1023-68AC-4093-8329-885357CD0F2F}, which is the identifier and is the same for both Multisim files.