Multisim and Ultiboard Idea Exchange

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It would be very helpful to have a preview of the footprints directly in the component browser.

I was told I should post this idea here for a greater chance of it being acted upon.  The original discussion is http://forums.ni.com/t5/Circuit-Design-Suite/Multisim-viewer-and-other-suggestions/m-p/3116428#M17285

 

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I'm interested to know if there are many others who would be interested in a Multisim viewer.  I'm hoping engineering see's this and it pricks their design creativity.  In my business, it would be very handy to have a low-cost viewer that our techs could use as they trouble-shoot the board.  It's not cost effective for us to buy complete licenses for techs that will only view, but not change the schematic.  Right now we print out the schematics, but not every value is available (it would be too crowded on the schematic) and the comments are hidden.  Plus you can't zoom in on printed paper.  The competition (read Mentor Graphics) have free viewers available.

 

Some other suggestions:

- The ability to have the values of a part pop up when the mouse is hovered over it. (Should be able to be switched off).

- The ability to group parts so that they can be oriented as a group. (Similar to how it is available in the component wizard).

 

These would be great enhancements.  Anyone else think so?

I have a circuit that simulates very slowly and when I look at the Windows 7 performance of my I7 computer it is using only 2 to 4% of the processor power. In reality it is only using one thread at 50 to 60%. I understand Multisim was written back before multicores were available but I request that this be one of your priority improvements.

 

To show how slow it is running after letting it run over night it has run less than 1 second of simulated time.

 

I have searched the web and found many people frustrated with the Multisim's slow simulation speed and the fact that the processers are 90% idle.

 

Give a slider control for those that want to slow down the simulation for whatever reason.

 

One of my biggest irritants is waiting to see if my circuit change fixed an issue and knowing the software is not even stressing the computer. Years ago I was using Pspice with a single core processor and when you click simulate it used about 95 to 98% of the processors time until it finished the simulation.  Now I have unused power and still have to wait.

 

I hope someone at NI will read this and make multithreading a priority requirement for Multisim.

Please add your comments, the more people that comment the more I believe NI will listen.

 

Hello to all,

 

it what nice, if we rotate not only the components but also the complete circuit including the wires.

or we can reflect the schematic.

 

original

Picture1.jpeg

at the moment

Picture2.jpeg

better

Picture3.jpg

 

 

I just finished laying out 3 boards and so I have some suggestions to make things easier in the future...

 

1) Add a 'net' column to the SMT Pads and THT Pads tabs, to show which net the pin is attached to.  This is documented here:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/Circuit-Design-Suite/Print-netlist-in-Ultiboard/m-p/3201459#M18003

It would let me see at a glance whether certain pins are actually connected to the nets they should be connected to

 

2) Add the ability to click on an error circle on the board and have Ultiboard highlight the error in the spreadsheet.  It works the other way around (click on the error in the spreadsheet view and you jump to the error on the board.  But it would be nice to go in the other direction.  I had problems with vias hitting incorrect traces and the spreadsheet details exactly which traces are connected, but I wanted to work on a specific problem on the board and didn't know which spreadsheet error this corresponded to.  This happened a lot.

 

3) Change the highlight color in the spreadsheet.  For some reason on my computer, I can barely see when a row is highlighted in the spreadsheet.  This is the same for Multisim and Ultiboard.  The background in my spreadsheet tab is white, and the highlight color is a very light gray.  If I look at the monitor at an angle so that the light hits it just right, I could see which component was highlighted.  But my neck started to hurt after awhile.

 

4) Have a button to turn on/off all layers at the same time.  I had an 8 layer board, and I alternated between just looking at the layer I was routing on to looking at all layers to figure out where to drop a via.  Double-clicking on each layer got very tedious.

 

Thanks!

In Ultiboard it is possible to export a 3D IGES, but it is not possible to import these 3D IGES files in to Solid Edge or Solid Works. It would be a big improvement of Ultiboard if this was possible in the next update.

I'd like to see a panelization option in Ultiboard, perhaps similar to the one in Altium (http://wiki.altium.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4426668). Preferably with an option to panelize multiple different designs onto a single panel, choice of V-groove's / scoring, break-off tabs, etc.

 

Ben

 

Hi,

 

the idea is that the colors of nets in Multisim will be automatically set for different nets. For example the ground net will automatically be black, the power supply (plus) red and so on... Maybe there is a way to save the user's preference in a config-file?

 

Thanks a lot

Jan

By default the soldermask Top and Bottom for a troughhole Via in Ultiboard are checked. It would be nice if I could select in the global preferences or PCB proberties of Ultiboard what I want for default for all the via's I place on the design.

Now, when my design is ready I have to think that I should uncheck the soldermask Top and Bottom of all via's on the design and when I did that and place a via the soldermask for this new placed via is checked for Top and Bottom.