Hierarchical design: Multisim works but the layout underneath it not.

[RnDMonkey]

That's different than what I got out of it. 🙂 I thought he was asking why he can't perfect the layout of a single hierarchal block, then have Ultiboard just use the same layout for each instance of that hierarchal block in his schematic.

[lacy]

You're right. It can be interpreted in different ways. Maybe he will come back on here and let us know which interprettation is the right one. That way we can be assured that we can actually come up with a proper solution. ]

By the way, mine is the correct one, Ryan (LOL):smileyvery-happy:

[RnDMonkey]

Touché. 🙂

[dekkersj]

Many thanx for the support.

However, if I select "Forward Annote to Ultiboard 10" I end up with an error since the file to forward to is missing. So, I have to transfer it instead of forwarding.

What I want is to re-use designs which are already layed out. To treat them as seperate blocks within a Multisim design with it's associated lay-out automatically recognized by Ultiboard after a "Transfer to Ultiboard 10". That saves a tremendous amount of time.

Regards,
Jacco

[RnDMonkey]

In your face, Lacy! 😛

lol, I haven't said that in years. 😄

Anyway, I think we can agree that it would be nice if this was a feature in the Circuit Design software.

[lacy]

O.K. I stand corrected and Ryan (butthole) was right. This is not going to be possible in Circuit Design Suite. I don't know of any Layout packages that are capable of this.

What I don't understand is the forward annote problem you describe. When you originally transfer your design to Ultiboard it saves it to a file. Any further forward annotes overwrites this same file with new information from the changes you made in Multisim. Unless you intentionally erase the project file, then it should be accessible by Multisim. Let me know something on this as it sounds strange.

One possiblity on the original inquiry is to create a library of layout circuits with schematics from Multisim. Put these into a Multisim project and then call them up when needed. Create a blank board as the main layout and then load the partial layout and then copy and paste into the main circuit. This is the only solution that I can come up with and like I said I do not know if it is something you would even want to do as it could be a pain in the booty on a large design.

[RnDMonkey]

I like your line of thinking, Lacy. It might be a pain, but if you just paste the desired subcircuit into Ultiboard and assign it to a parts group, you could use the Group Replica Place command to copy that layout to one of the groups that belongs to the schematic. Then you could delete your template group and copy the layout n-times from the first group replica to the rest of the subcircuits. It's not quick, but it's dirty. 🙂 Oh, wouldn't it be nice if NI had such an amazingly useful feature built in? 😉 😉 :nudge: :nudge: