Out in Front: March 28, 1996

Intusoft’s new Magnetics Designer tool helps you synthesize and optimize inductors and transformers. You input your component’s electrical specifications using Windows templates. Magnetics Designer uses a database containing thousands of cores and materials to produce a complete inductor or transformer design within a 10-Hz to more than 1-MHz frequency range. The program predicts many component characteristics, such as magnetizing and leakage inductances, interwinding capacitance, peak flux density, dc and ac resistances, weight, and temperature rise.

Magnetics Designer’s database includes families from many well-known magnetic-core vendors, including Ferrite International, Magnetics, Micrometals, Philips, TDK, and Thomson. You can also add core and material information using an Excel spreadsheet. To use the tool, you select a core material and family and enter the operating frequency. Magnetics Designer then selects the best core for the application. You can use the selected core or choose another from the library. You then enter additional specifications, such as voltage and current per winding and peak flux density. Magnetics Designer produces a completed design, including number of turns and wire sizes, to minimize total power dissipation for a given temperature rise in the smallest core. You can interactively try cores and change wire turns, wire gauges, and other parameters to optimize your design if Magnetics Designer cannot meet all design specifications.

Other useful features include the ability to generate a Spice model of the completed inductor or transformer design. You use the model for system simulation before a physical component becomes available for breadboarding. Magnetics Designer also has a "winding sheet" that tells you how to build the component. You can construct the device yourself or use Magnetics Designer to e-mail the winding sheet directly to a core manufacturer. Magnetics Designer runs on Windows 3.1, 95, and NT. The tool costs $1000 if you purchase it by June 28, 1996, and $1500 thereafter.
—by Jim Lipman

Intusoft, San Pedro, CA. (310) 833-0710.