Multisim Waveform Recorder (and Waveform Reader)

[_user32]

Have you ever had the need to record a rather long running simulation?   In a typical use case with Multisim you can run a transient simulation with Multisim and selected voltage/current data stays in memory.   For example, in a Multisim SPICE analysis selected nets will remain saved in memory and in an interactive simulation, nets connected to the built-in virtual instruments will stay in memory and can be viewed in the Grapher.

The one challenge with this, is that you are limited by memory and in some extreme cases (very extreme with lots of nodes and long simulation times) you can even possibly run out of memory.

With this Waveform Recorder VI, you can select and save to disk, up to 4 waveforms automatically for archiving or post-simulation analysis (the waveform recording time is only limited by how much disk space you have).    The VI allows simulation data to be saved in 1 of 2 formats LVM or TDMS.

LVM

LVM is a formatted tab delimited text format that can be opened with Excel and is natively supported in LabVIEW.

TDMS

TDMS is a proprietary packed, indexed binary format that can be read with LabVIEW and Diadem (a stand alone data analysis package).   NI also offers a free Excel reader for the TDMS format located here (http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/epd/p/id/2944)

Diadem

If you are doing much in the way of archiving, data analysis and post processing, Diadem is a perfect blend of ease of use and sophisticated data analysis, that allows users to better manage their data.   (www.ni.com/diadem)

A simple viewer program allows you to read back and print recorded waveforms recorded with this Multisim tool.

Written with LabVIEW 2010

For use with Multisim v11 or later

place contents in "C:\Program Files\National Instruments\Circuit Design Suite 11.0\lvinstruments" and relaunch Multisim to load instrument.