Electronics Workbench

[dantheman210]

Hello All, I am somewhat new to this stuff so I am going to start off at the beginning.

Instead of Money that I was owed, My Brother-In-Law gave me a laptop from his office that he bought (I SAW the invoice) from his company.

There were allot of company stuff on it that he did get rid of, but when he asked the office manager about this program called Electronics Workbench, she told him that they use-to use it, and have changed over to a different less technical program that did the same thing.

My questions are :

- because the company owned the program, and now I own the laptop with the program on it, do I qualify for upgrades or updates and so on with this program. (I have played around with it and it is FAR FAR out of my scope of knowledge, but I am learning a bit more about it every day)

- should I still use it or can I get into trouble. I asked him to talk to their HR dept. and he ended up going to the office manager and asking her, and she typed up a letter (on their letter head) saying that it is a "satellite office install" of a program that they own and because they know about it, it is ok for me to use it.

- Anyone ever heard of this program.


Thanks,


Dan

[Dean Huster]

Electronics Workbench was a very popular program in the 1990s but you don't hear much of folks using it these days. Myself, I use very little electronics-related software.

In general, that computer should have had the hard drive erased of all data files and all applications programs, retaining only the operating system. Although it varies from supplier to supplier, software is rarely "transferrable" to a new owner as the vendor cannot be sure that ALL the material (original media, documentation, etc.)has been sold or given to the new owner and that no copies of the program exist elsewhere.

I wouldn't even make a try for upgrades. But using it won't be a problem since there isn't any software "police" looking over your shoulder. It becomes more an ethics issue than anything. For every legitimate copy of Electronics Workbench that was sold, there's probably 50 illegal copies in use, so figure the odds of the copy on the machine you now have being original!

That "satellite office install" crap won't cut it, either. The software is sold for installation on one machine only or one machine at a time unless the original license was for installation on multiple machines. Just because a company owns 100 computers doesn't mean that they can buy one copy of software and install it on all their machines without authorization from the vendor. AutoDesk is really picky about stuff like that and one private technical school in the Oklahoma City area had to permanently shut its doors after U.S. Marshalls went in and found a copy of AutoCAD installed on bunches of computers after the school had bought only one copy.

Dean

[haklesup]

Electronics workbench was renamed MultiSim and bought by National Instruments (NI) last year. As such to get updates you need to buy a very expensive annual support package costing thousands. You may qualify for the last patch for the version you own but not an upgrade to latest. I have versions 1, 2 & 7-10 and a current support package.

You should be able to download the manual online and there are lots of tutorials but I'm not sure about compatibility with the example files with your version. The full current version is also available as a free trial and low cost student versions. Also see their website for more, I forget what they restricted on the trial.

I don't know what version you have, there are a number of factors but it should be perfectly useful for schematic capture and general electronic simulation (tough luck with bugs because you can't U/G). If you also got UltiBoard, you can also do PCB layout. There were several levels of the product mostly killing the spreadsheet tools in the cheaper ones and limiting things like autorouting.

Absolutely you should use it if you have a use for it. EWB generally was sold with per seat licence and current NI license allows a second install on a home or alternate backup PC but not for use by a second operator. So even if you don't have the disks and books, you likely have a valid single use license for that laptop. They should hand over any licensed software materials on that PC to you in fact IMO if they are not still using it. EWB had some kind of serial number activastion and now NI has online activation and updates.

These companies are more concerned about for profit companies using illegal copies to do work that generates revinue not about the odd individual who uses it to learn about electronics. In fact given the full free trial they offer, they want people like you to use it at home so you can tell your boss to buy it for you at work. This product had its roots as a teaching simulator then as a low cost windows GUI schematic and sim program it is now a full featured electronic CAD and SIM package with data connections to NIs line of test equipment hardware through LabView

[Dean Huster]

With a sell-off and new name, updates are probably several versions behind and impossible to get. No wonder I hadn't heard of Workbench being used much -- it went through the software Witness Protection Program. And here I thought MultiSim was some game program that let you build cities manage them.

Dean

[Joseph]

You might instead like to try the free simulator I have been liking for a long time, now. http://www.linear.com/designtools/softw ... hercad.jsp