I've downloaded a trial version of Ultiboard 10 from national instruments.
I used to use multisim at university and was always impressed with it, so i thought i would give ultiboard a go for making PCBs.

The problem appears to be that I can't seem to join components together using traces.

I use the 'follow me' tool, which connects to the first pin but won't connect to the destinating pin of a component and tries to avoid it.

An error appears in the DRC window, which says "Design Rule Error: Unused pin is connected to copper"

Any ideas?

 

If you are talking about the red circle around the pad, don't worry about it, it is just a stupid thing of the software. When you will print the design it will be printed fine.

 

thanks.

what about the design error?

An error appears in the DRC window, which says "Design Rule Error: Unused pin is connected to copper"

 

thats only there cause you haven't imported a netlist. If you had imported a netlist the program would know what pins are used and where they are meant to be connected...

 

that's been really helpful. thanks for your help so far.

i've got this far (as attached).

my next problem is creating the tracks, if i click the autoroute button, it spends hours tweaking the same tracks over and over again. i.e. "route 43 of 53 complete", progress bar never finishes.

so I tried clicking the part autoplacement tool and it just puts all the components in a row.

What can people recommend?

 

any ideas anyone?

 

sure.
If you're using a single sided board, best route it yourself, get familiar with jumpers and learn how to use these on the program.

If you have double sided board equipment available, good for you forget the jumpers and autoroute

Now if you need a little hand, i can help, because i have significant experience with this dreadful program and its non-intuitive layout. Even if you have double layers enabled it seems to only route one layer ON TOP side of the board, how stupid!!!!
You need to use the box down the bottom to make sure copper bottom is enabled on each net....

if you get stuck i can give you a hand.

 

ok, thanks for that. I shall give that a go and let you know the results.

 

My approach for single side boards is, if auto-route doesn't find a solution within 30 seconds, just either accept what it has routed and Place -> Jumper between the unrouted nets, or else move the components around a bit and try again. This has made the difference between 70% routed vs 100% routed, but there will always be an upper limit for single side boards.

Also, I can recommend the getting started tutorial that comes with it. Although it doesn't go into detail on anything, it will convey the basic techniques within an hour or so. I haven't found any schematic capture or layout tool that's entirely intuitive to use, but Ultiboard is growing on me.

S lannan: The layers routed on are determined by (at least) both the PCB settings and the net/net-group settings. I have found that by default, it routes on top and bottom copper for schematics sent from Multisim - perhaps your default settings have been changed?

 

All pcb track software has drawbacks, some annoying, others really stupid. I used Autocad for 25+ years to make 2D & 3D drawings and pcb artworks too. Nowadays, they say Autocad is un-suitable for pcb's, but I never had a problem that I could not solve, even on some complex multi-layer boards.

Best Regards, DPW [ Everyone's knowledge is in-complete...Albert Einstein]