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Multisim viewer (and other suggestions)

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 rotate text.

- 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?  Any other suggestions?

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Message 1 of 12
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Hi Circuit Rider,

 

Thanks for your suggestion. We will pass them on to R&D.

 

Regards,

Tayyab R,
National Instruments.
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Message 2 of 12
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I hope this gets or has been implemented - I have the same problem and have been pushing my management to purchase another Multisim license for a tech floater laptop, but these days budgets are tight.

An alternative would be the ability to export the Multisim schematic info to Altium or PCAD or ....

I could get a viewer ordered today if it was in the $100-$250 cost range.

John

Message 3 of 12
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I just wanted to add my support for this idea. We have an internal department that does circuit design and testing for prototypes and we currently have to either print out the circuit diagrams or huddle around a computer with a license of Multisim. We simply do not have the budget to buy full licenses of Multisim to discuss board layouts.

 

Having a Multisim Viewer would be a great value-added feature for designers using Multisim because it would allow for better dialog with their clients during the design phase. SolidWorks has done something along this lines and I have used their viewer when working with mechanical designers and its been a great asset. In the SolidWorks viewer, you can add comments and mark-up the design to communicate issues and revisions to the design.

 

I would really like to see this for Multisim.

 

Tim

Message 4 of 12
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I'd also like to voice my support for a viewer. This would be a really nice tool to allow others to examine schematics. 

Message 5 of 12
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Did anything ever become of this?

 

I have a client that could really use this.

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Message 6 of 12
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@Lucky_Dog wrote:

Did anything ever become of this?

 

I have a client that could really use this.


Not that I know of.  Perhaps if enough of us continue to pester NI they will make the viewer.  Honestly, it surprises me that they haven't done this already. I seriously doubt it would take much effort to produce one and they could actually sell them if the price was reasonable - though their competition provides free viewers.  The main benefit to the company (with a free viewer) would be that working samples of their product would get spread around the EE world.  Seems a no-brainer to me.  They should take their cue from Google who has learned how to profit through free products.

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Message 7 of 12
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As a workaround, you can print out Multisim schematics using PDFCreator or similar programs which will convert the schematics to PDF. Of course these PDF files cannot be edited. 

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Message 8 of 12
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@Buechsenschuetz wrote:

As a workaround, you can print out Multisim schematics using PDFCreator or similar programs which will convert the schematics to PDF. Of course these PDF files cannot be edited. 


Which is what we are doing currently, but as was said earlier, the comments and values can't be viewed as they are largely turned off - otherwise the schematic becomes so crowded it becomes difficult to read.  Also, for us, we are constantly updating our work so the paper copies tend to get outdated quickly.  And then of course, you can't zoom in, so you either have a small unreadable overall schematic or several readable sections but which tend to loose continuity.  Did I mention "off page connectors"?  Try finding your way around a paper copy of a schematic loaded with off page connectors (by the way, kudos to MultiSim for making those work so well).

 

Yes, printing our schematics is what we do because we don't have any choice, but it certainly isn't ideal.

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Message 9 of 12
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The best way to get ideas like this implemented is to post them on the Idea Exchange and get as many people as possible to give the idea kudos. NI does respond to ideas with a lot of public support.

 

If you do post an idea or find that one is already there but getting little attention, post a link to it in this thread.

 

Lynn

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