NI Circuit Design Community Blog
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Q&A Refresher on Multisim LabVIEW Instruments
LabVIEW instruments are great tools that Multisim users, including myself, often forget about probably because they require one single extra step of installation to get them to work.
I wanted to write down this post as a quick refresher of what the LabVIEW instruments for Multisim are and how they can help in the accurate validation of your circuit design.
What is a LabVIEW instrument?
In simple words, they are additional "nodes or components" placed on your circuit schematic to perform a special functionality that could only be done using LabVIEW blocks. Examples of these functionalities would be the signal generation of a special waveform, a special calculation of your simulation output such as the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) of an amplified signal, or even a utility functionality such as live connection to the Digi-Key database to get information on parts availability and pricing.
Do I have to be a LabVIEW user to use LabVIEW instruments in Multisim?
No, the LabVIEW instruments are compiled as .llb files that you simply need to copy and paste under the specified directory of the LabVIEW instruments in Multisim. The directory is the one defined under Options>Global Preferences in the Multisim menu under User LabVIEW instruments path
Once you've done so, the imported instruments will appear in the instruments toolbar in Multisim
Where can I find ready-to-use LabVIEW instruments for different functionalities?
There is a community page that includes about 70 instruemnts for a wide range of applications; from advanced signal generation, to complex visualization, application specific analysis and calculation, and many others. Simply go ni.com/multisim/analysis.
Can I connect to hardware and import real-world signals into circuit simulation using these instruments?
Definitely! The simplest example would be the microphone and speaker circuit in the Multisim samples folder. In Multisim go to File>Open samples under LabVIEW Instruments and pick the Microphone and Speaker sample design.
In this example you can connect to your computer microphone to pick up an audio signal, stream it as an input signal into Multisim (for filtering, amplification, or mixing), then feeding it back to your computer speaker for play-back.
Let us know ideas of instruments and analyses that you would like to see in Multisim.
Mahmoud W
National Instruments
