Bench Talk

I think we’d all agree that there never seems to be enough time to get everything we want to do….done. Engineers especially, face the double time pressure of meeting current project deadlines while at the same time keeping up with new technology and new products for the next project down the road. One of the things we at Mouser pride ourselves on is in making it easier for engineers stay up to date on new products and technologies through our website, technical articles, and newsletters. With the recent announcement of our MultiSIM BLUE tool, Mouser will now be able to directly help engineers with the first part of the equation: reducing their current time-to-market pressures.

MultiSIM BLUE is a complete circuit design tool born of a partnership between Mouser Electronics and National Instruments (NI) that integrates schematic capture, simulation, PCB layout, and “BOM-to-cart” functions all within the same environment. At first glance, it may seem like the standard package available from any one of a number of software vendors. However, if you peel back the onion you start to see some of the unique advantages of MultiSIM BLUE.

Simulation is a key step in the design process that can get overlooked or skipped because it’s difficult to get an environment set up that smoothly handles the work flow from schematic capture and the PCB layout. The importance of this step, however, cannot be stressed enough. It has been estimated that accurate simulation can save up to 3 prototype phases on a complex design, translating into nearly a month of time and conservatively, as much as $15k in materials, assembly, and test costs. In a world of shrinking design cycles and stiff competition, a month can be huge! By integrating an easy-to-use and intuitive simulation engine within the schematic capture environment, we wanted to remove any roadblocks, and hopefully save engineers time in getting products to market.

Schematic capture, simulation, and PCB layout are all familiar tasks for most design engineers. But I bet you just asked yourself “What in the world is ‘BOM-to-Cart’ and how can it help me work faster?” BOM-to-Cart refers to the deep level of integration that MultiSIM BLUE has with the Mouser website. When you use our 100,000+ part database, you’re able to view your bill of materials, including pricing and part availability, in one click. From the BOM window, you can upload the entire project to a cart on the Mouser website with another click. This completely eliminates having to look up parts one-by-one and manually drop them into a cart, saving you a lot of time as well as eliminating potential errors in the transcription process.

I have just discussed two of the many features of MultiSIM BLUE. Over the next several weeks, I’ll be doing deeper dives into both simulation and BOM-to-Cart in addition to other unique advantages.In the meantime, head over to www.mouser.com/MultiSimBlue to learn more and sign up to be notified when the tool is available next month.