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Ultiboard 2001 Question

L

L.W.

Jan 1, 1970
0
O.K. I have just recently downloaded the demo for Ultiboard 2001 from
Electronics Workbench. I am having a problem with the Rip-up and Retry
Internal Router. It continually give me an error message. All other
functions seem to work ok. Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong?
I am using this with Multisim Power Pro. So far this is the only board
layout package that seems to work with Multisim 2001 properly. Any
help would be appreciated.

TIA

[email protected]
 
D

Don Prescott

Jan 1, 1970
0
My commiserations. Ultiboard has become an awful product. The router
- originally the Bartels router, which worked quite well on it's own
has been integrated by EWS, and the result is an abomination in my
opinion. I think it's nigh on unuseable. But if you're hooked on
MultiSIM and want integration then I guess you're stuck with
Ultiboard.

What have I got? I use Pulsonix PCB with the integrated Pulsonix
Spice. This is a truly great product and eats MultiSIM/Ultiboard for
breakfast. I would really struggle if I were forced to switch to EWS.
Give it a try on www.pulsonix.com and see if you don't agree.

Prescott
 
L

L.W.

Jan 1, 1970
0
My commiserations. Ultiboard has become an awful product. The router
- originally the Bartels router, which worked quite well on it's own
has been integrated by EWS, and the result is an abomination in my
opinion. I think it's nigh on unuseable. But if you're hooked on
MultiSIM and want integration then I guess you're stuck with
Ultiboard.

What have I got? I use Pulsonix PCB with the integrated Pulsonix
Spice. This is a truly great product and eats MultiSIM/Ultiboard for
breakfast. I would really struggle if I were forced to switch to EWS.
Give it a try on www.pulsonix.com and see if you don't agree.

Prescott


Thanks for your reply. I kinda figured Ultiboard was not so good. I do
like Multisim 2001 fairly well (I guess because it is the one I am
most familiar with). I think these companies intentionally design
their products to be used only with their line, as I have yet to find
anything that is truly compatible with the output of Multisim. Oh
well, I will just have to suffer through the limitations. I am just
toying with some designs as a hobby. If I were doing it
professionally, I would probably want something much better.

Thnak you ver much

[email protected]
 
A

Andy Peters

Jan 1, 1970
0
L.W. said:
O.K. I have just recently downloaded the demo for Ultiboard 2001 from
Electronics Workbench. I am having a problem with the Rip-up and Retry
Internal Router. It continually give me an error message. All other
functions seem to work ok. Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong?

Well, that's an error that I HAVEN'T seen with UB2001.

Here are the two biggest problems I've noticed with UB2001. Note that
I use UltiCap for schematic capture and not MultiSim, so there may be
"issues."

1) If you've poured any planes or added any copper areas and you
attempt to import a new netlist (like, if you add a part or two), the
program crashes.

2) When you import a netlist, it throws away all of the existing line
width and spacing settings and reverts to your defaults. It doesn't
change the width of any lines you've placed, but the list of nets
shows all nets to have the default width and spacing settings.
(Ultiboard attempts to back-annotate the width settings, which appear
as a WIDTH attribute with an odd ASCII character attached to the nets
in UltiCap. However, when exporting the netlist from UltiCap, a
complaint is generated if such WIDTH attributes exist.)

Among the annoyances are a pretty large footprint library. However,
the idiots at EW have no idea what manufacturer part numbers
correspond to things like "POT1" and "RELAY" and such. Another
annoyance is that I haven't figured out how to place a
non-plated-through hole. Finally, the Gerber export couldn't output a
negative image.

Of course electronics workbench sent me a demo CD of the Series 7
tools, but I haven't bothered to install it as I doubt that the
"upgrade" is worth the $795 or whatever they quoted.

--a
 
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