Multisim and Ultiboard Idea Exchange

Dear NI

Ideas for NI Multisim software:

1. Schematic: To make an option to lock REFDES during copying circuit to the new sheet.

2. Schematic: To add power bias annotation for a components.

3. Schematic: To add active probe (see CircuitMaker 2000 solution).

4. Schematic: To add operating state annotation for transistors (active, cutt-off, saturated).

5. Schematic: To set some min and max limits for a voltage, current or power (they shall be visible in Grapher when you generate the plot). 

6. Simulation: To add circuit optimizer with various algorithms: Hooke and Jeeves, Levenberg-Marquardt etc.

For example: I would like to find a resitors values according to voltage limits.

7. Simulation: Current Worst Case simulation can not find right solution for a non monothonic functions, so please consider to add Hooke-Jeeves algorithm to find real min and max.

8. Simulation: To add Root Sum Squared (RSS) method.

9. Simulation: To add assymetrical tolerances option for a components (resistors, capacitors, voltage and current sources etc.)

10. Simulation: To add additional drift tolerance (aging, humidity etc.) option for a components (resistors and capacitors). Please create an option to turn ON and turn OFF additional drifts globally for a whole circuit design and for specific component.

11. Simulation: To add component stress analysis but more advanced. The goal is to check maximum dissipated power according to derating power characteristics for resistors according to current operating temperature (TEMP parameter for circuit simulation) and maximum voltage for a components (resistors, capacitors).

12. Grapher: To add histogram plots for a Monte Carlo simulation incl. table with data: MEAN, SIGMA, UCL, LCL:

• Normal distribution plot
• Cumulative distribution plot

13. Grapher: To add option to generate one report for Worst Case EVA, RSS and Monte Carlo.

14. Grapher: To add 3D plots (see circuit optimizer).

15. Interface: Batched analysis is fine, but it would be a good to see TEMP parameter visible in main window.

16. Interface: Fast BOM import for Excel and txt file (incl. some component parameters included value, TC1, max operating voltage and so on). For a quick changes on schematic.

17. Simulation: To add Worst Case option to Monte Carlo analysis to check ONLY endpoints values.

18. Model: To add a module that can build a component model from characteristics from datasheet (eg. to track output voltage characteristics of voltage regulator and to build behavioral model).

19. Model: To improve custom component drawing editor (make it handy and efficient like drawing schematic in Multisim). Current solution takes too much time.

The goal of these changes is to focus your product more in professional market where engineers must to find voltage/current limits according to operating temperature limits and component tolerance variation. Your product is good but it might be more oriented to perform these tasks much faster.

Regards,

PB

Some users have suggested the following ideas:

1) Add a feature searching functionality: The current search options are mostly related to the vendor name or characteristics, sometimes it could be cumbersome to find a part using the vendor name. Parts should be also accessible by its characteristics and features.

2) Add a command to access via command line the interactive simulation.

Hello,

Recently, a Monte Carlo Simulation was run, testing and changing the value of 12 resistors on a simple circuit. But the computer crashed rounding the 8k samples stating the error:

Changes on the resistors, power sources and simulations options were made but still, the tool was not able to handle at least 20k samples on the same run. The computer used had 40 cores and 64GB of RAM.

It will be a great improvement to the tool if the memory could be increased or even creating a 64-bit application.

Thanks.