Multisim and Ultiboard
MS 12.0.1 Crashed
I was working with a 6 sheet design where some of the sheets have hierarchical blocks. Only the main 6 sheets were open. Fortunately, I had just clicked save-all in the tool bar which seemed to go fine. Then I clicked close-all from the tool bar. It appeared that everything closed correctly, then it crashed.
Happened again after clicking close-all in the tool bar. Tested it a few times using the close-all command from the file menu, and that works OK. Only crashes when I use close-all from the toolbar.
I think it's because I used the customize interface function to add-subtract buttons from my toolbar. Most recently, I added close all button to the toolbar.
When this happens, I know I need to reset my profile or some such thing, which puts all my toolbar customizations back to default, then the problem goes away. I just forget exactly how.
Gee, I wish Multisim was more tollerant of toolbar configuration changes. What's the point of having a configurable tool bar if changing the configuration of the toolbar makes the underlying application unstable?
OK, thanks.
BTW, I used Windows Snipping Tool to save the toolbar I had set up, then used info from a KB article to get the configuration file to go back to default, which wipes out all of the toolbar customizations, etc. (I would have linked to it from this post, but I can't seem to find it again.) Then I used the image from the Snipping Tool as a guide to rebuild my custom tool bar, and now seems to work OK with close-all in the tool bar.
I think there's a pattern to this that I've seen on successive MS versions. When MS crashes due to a customization of the tool bar, it's only after a customization has been made that follows a previous customization.
Background
I find the default setup of the multiple toolbars bugs me with the way they all stack up on one side. Seemed like I was often having to arrange the multiple toolbars out of a stack-up and into a line so as not to sacrifice too much schematic view area to toolbars. And, just as a personal preference I don't tend to use most of the buttons from the default toolbars, so just seems like clutter making it difficult to find the buttons I do want to use. But, that's why the MS developers made them customizable, which is nice. So I customize the toolbar area by creating my own single toolbar and fill the tool bar with some of the buttons from the various default tool bars, then add a few buttons from various menu functions whose buttons aren't displayed in the default tool bars. Then I uncheck (not delete) the default tool bars so they're not displayed. This makes for one simple continuous tool bar that doesn't have any of the stacking issues that the default multiple tool bar scenario does.
OK, Back to the pattern I was talking about...
As I work with MS, different client's designs require regular uses of some commands and feature while not so much of others. I typically customize the tool bar to help me get through a particular project. If I start with a fresh config file per the KB mentioned above, and customize the tool bar as mentioned above, it works fine for a good period of use, say weeks or months. After that, say another project comes up, if I customize it again, and one of the buttons on the tool bar causes MS to crash, it's always a button I've just added in the most recent customization.
When I recover from this by getting MS to set the config file back to default, I find I can always arrange the toolbar exactly as it was when the latest added button made MS crash, but everything will work fine.
perhaps to sum up, MS doesn't seem to tolerate successive customizations to the toolbar very well.
