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Multisim helps educators find new and innovative ways of delivering course content with powerful functionality custom designed and created for educators and students.
Table of Contents
- Fully Interactive Simulator
- 20 Different Virtual Instruments
- 24 powerful Analyses
- Powerful Teaching Options
- Circuit Restrictions and Hidden Faults
- 3D Virtual NI ELVIS Breadboarding Environment
- Ladder Diagrams to Teach Control Theory
- 13,000-part Database
- Professional Functionality for Advanced Designs
- Single Symbol Digital Components
- Related Links
Fully Interactive Simulator
Multisim features the industry’s only fully interactive simulator, allowing the user to make circuit changes “on-the-fly” and see simulation results change in real-time for enhanced comprehension. A new,built-in screen-capture utility makes it fast and easy to illustrate assignments, lab manuals and other course materials with meaningful graphics.
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20 Different Virtual Instruments
Students interact with their circuits using numerous Virtual Instruments (including an oscilloscope, multimeter, spectrum analyzer, etc.) that look and function just like their real-world counterparts. In addition, you can use Multisim’s suite of simulated Agilent and Tektronix instruments to teach your students how to use the real instrumentation from these vendors in a risk-free environment. The simulated implementations look and operate just like the real thing.
Virtual Instruments within NI Multisim
Using the power of LabVIEW programming, Multisim also provides the unique ability to incorporate custom virtual instruments that extend the simulation and analysis capabilities beyond anything currently available. For example, a LabVIEW instrument can be used to teach difficult to understand or complex topics such as phasors.
Phasor Diagram LabVIEW Instrument
24 powerful Analyses
Multisim provides students with 24 powerful Analyses (including Monte Carlo, Worst Case, I-V Analyzer,etc.) that allow them to explore and understand circuit behavior in depth, often in ways not possible using real test instruments.
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Powerful Teaching Options
Instructors can completely customize Multisim’s user interface as well as the instruments and analyses that are available, controlling what a student sees and can access within a circuit. This provides instructors with a range of powerful teaching options and the flexibility to introduce concepts in a controlled fashion, matching the software’s complexity to the students’ level or course content. You can also easily add narrative and graphics to circuit files to further explain concepts in a lab or self-study environment. In addition, you can create and distribute reusable Simulation Profiles, each containing a complete SPICE parameter set up, to ensure that your students complete their assignments successfully as they become familiar with simulation.
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Circuit Restrictions and Hidden Faults
Multisim’s Circuit Restrictions provide instructors with the ability to set up hidden faults to teach troubleshooting skills. Or, lock and hide sub-circuits to create “solve the black box” problems. The easy to use Electrical Rules Check, featuring visual error markers and “zoom to error” functionality, helps students quickly locate and correct their own wiring errors, avoiding frustration and saving valuable lab time. In addition, Measurement Probes can now be placed anywhere on a circuit to annotate a schematic with dynamic voltage and current values. Control the display of each probe individually with threshold and precision settings.
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3D Virtual NI ELVIS Breadboarding Environment
The NI ELVIS Breadboard View allows students to build their circuits and perform experiments in a “live” 3D breadboarding environment. Provide your students with instruction and “hands-on” experience in this important skill before sending them into the lab.
Ladder Diagrams to Teach Control Theory
Use Multisim’s new Ladder Diagrams to introduce students to control theory within the familiar Multisim environment. Assign students the task of building ladder diagrams to control the simulated “real” mechanical equipment included with Multisim 8. Both the ladder components and the simulated equipment are fully animated, providing meaningful feedback.
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13,000-part Database
Multisim’s 13,000-part database includes all the standard components you’d expect, plus several categories of unique “parts” that enhance the learning environment:
- Interactive components such as switches and potentiometers can be manipulated while the simulation is running.
- Animated components such as LEDs and 7-segment displays change their appearance in response to simulation results.
- Virtual components allow you to set their parameters to any value you like — even if you could not actually find a part with those values in real life. Great for illustrating theoretical concepts.
- Rated components enhance student learning by “blowing up” if certain parameters are exceeded (e.g. power or current).
- 3D components use photographs that look just like the real thing to replace traditional schematic symbols. Helps students in introductory courses to make the leap in understanding between schematics and real circuits.
Professional Functionality for Advanced Designs
Not only is Multisim one of the world’s most widely used software in electronics education, but it is also a popular tool in the professional EDA market. As such, it includes a wealth of functionality that is beyond the needs of most students, but is available for senior design courses, post-graduate work or research projects.
Take advantage of functionality such as project management, robust bus support, hierarchical and multi-sheet designs, design constraints that pass to PCB layout, a powerful spreadsheet view, circuit wizards that auto-generate circuitry to match your designated parameters, variant support and much, much more. Multisim’s professional functionality easily handles the more complex designs.
Single Symbol Digital Components
Single Symbol Digital Components are parts available in Multisim that use exactly one graphic element to represent an entire integrated circuit such as a 74LS00D. The single symbol matches the pinout of the chip as specified by the datasheet. For example the images below are the single symbol representation and the datasheet pinout of the 74LS00D, which is a quadruple 2-input NAND gate circuit.
Single symbol digital components are useful because they have power, ground, and other connections visible that must be wired in the lab. Students will see as soon as they place a NAND gate how it must be wired in the real-world. By using single symbol components, students will save valuable lab time by developing an appreciation for how components must be connected in the real world.
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