National Semiconductor design tool "WEBENCH® LED Architect"

[Steve K]

hi gang,

As a practicing electrical engineer, I get all sorts of info from manufacturers and trade magazines. One recent item that showed up in my e-mail is about a design tool from National Semiconductor. The summary is "National's new WEBENCH® LED Architect makes it quicker and easier to design your system by creating multiple solutions for complete lighting topologies in minutes. The new design tool's real-time calculation enables lighting designers to create a customized lighting design with only your desired light output (in lumens) and input voltage supply. "

You can find it here:
http://www.national.com/dialog/prodview/0,,Public_544,00.html

Most semiconductor manufacturers have useful tools like this. I know that Linear Technology has a bunch of tools for simulating switching power supplies (probably only for their chips, but that's understandable). Very useful stuff for tweaking your design before committing it to hardware.

I haven't looked at the National Semiconductor tool yet. Anyone used it and have any feedback??

regards,
Steve K.

 

[HarryN]

Hi, I have used National's site to make some simple voltage supply stuff, and it is pretty good, as long as you need the voltage range that they are pushing in their parts. They have a tendency to push the frequencies pretty high so that smaller inductors and caps can be used, which is ok, but of course it limits efficiency.

It seems like National is the "king of being average". Their parts aren't particularly impressive, but they mostly work and are reasonably priced.