FAQ and Tech Notes

You can install several versions of HYPERSIM on your computer.

The Bundle Pin Info command is available from the right-click menu of a pin.
There are a few points to keep in mind when using this command:

• Adding or deleting bundle internal pins is making a structural modification to the device definition. If this symbol has been used in multiple places on the diagram, you will be asked whether you want to update all devices of the same type, or only this one.
• It is important to verify that device simulation data supports adding pins. In several cases this may result into a data error.
• Modifying the device definition in this way makes it different from the symbol definition that is stored in the original library. If you use the "Update from Lib" command or any other mechanism that causes the device to revert back to its original definition, these changes will be lost.
• If this is a subcircuit device, the bundle pin must correspond to the bundle port connector in the subcircuit. The "Bundle Pin Info" command attempts to make corresponding modifications to the port connector, but it is up to you to verify these changes and make sure the new internal pins connect to an appropriate signal in the internal circuit.

I want to change the color of a device on a schematic to mark its status without changing the symbol itself. How can I do this?
To set the color of a device on a diagram, simply right-click on the device and select the "Fill Colour" or "Line Colour" command. The "Fill Colour" command sets the color used for the interior of closed objects like rectangles, ovals, etc. The "Line Colour" command sets the color for lines and for the line border part of filled objects.
Note the following points regarding these settings:

• Device symbols can be arbitrarily complicated with any number of graphic elements and different colors. Applying a single color setting using one of these commands may not always give the desired result. For this reason, the color settings applied when creating a symbol have an "overridable" tag associated with them, allowing you to select which elements will change color in response to settings on the device. Most color settings are overridable by default. This means that when the "Fill Colour" or "Line Colour" commands are used to apply a new color, those settings will be changed to the new color. In the symbol editor, any color setting can be made "not overridable". This means that the "Fill Colour" and "Line Colour" commands will have no effect on these specific graphic elements. It is therefore possible to create a device symbol that will be immune from these override commands and the color settings will appear to have no effect on these devices.
• The "Fill Colour" and "Line Colour" commands do not change the symbol definition and affect only the single device selected when the command is applied. These settings are stored with the device instance and are applied "on the fly" as the device is drawn.

I want to change the color of a device on a schematic to mark its status without changing the symbol itself. How can I do this?
To set the color of a device on a diagram, simply right-click on the device and select the "Fill Colour" or "Line Colour" command. The "Fill Colour" command sets the color used for the interior of closed objects like rectangles, ovals, etc. The "Line Colour" command sets the color for lines and for the line border part of filled objects.
Note the following points regarding these settings:

• Device symbols can be arbitrarily complicated with any number of graphic elements and different colors. Applying a single color setting using one of these commands may not always give the desired result. For this reason, the color settings applied when creating a symbol have an "overridable" tag associated with them, allowing you to select which elements will change color in response to settings on the device. Most color settings are overridable by default. This means that when the "Fill Colour" or "Line Colour" commands are used to apply a new color, those settings will be changed to the new color. In the symbol editor, any color setting can be made "not overridable". This means that the "Fill Colour" and "Line Colour" commands will have no effect on these specific graphic elements. It is therefore possible to create a device symbol that will be immune from these override commands and the color settings will appear to have no effect on these devices.
• The "Fill Colour" and "Line Colour" commands do not change the symbol definition and affect only the single device selected when the command is applied. These settings are stored with the device instance and are applied "on the fly" as the device is drawn.

I have created a special purpose device symbol and I don’t want the name to be made visible when I place it on a diagram, even though the Auto-assign setting for the design is "visible". How do I do this?
To prevent the auto-assigned name from being made visible on a specific symbol, you can set the visibility options on the "Name" attribute while you are editing the symbol. To do this:

• Open the symbol in the symbol editor.
• Select the "Part Attributes" command in the "Options" menu.
• Click on the "Name" field in the field list.
• Set the Visibility option to "Never Visible".
• Enter any text (e.g. "X") for the value of the "Name" field.
• Click "Done", then close and save the part.

IMPORTANT: You must enter a value for the "Name" field even if it is going to be changed as soon as the symbol is placed in the schematic. If you do not enter a value, the field is not saved with the symbol and the visibility setting will be lost.

I have created a special purpose device symbol and I don’t want a name to be auto-assigned to this device when I place it on a diagram, even though the Auto-assignment is enabled for the design. How do I do this?
To prevent the auto-assigned name from being made visible on a specific symbol, you can set a special value for the "Name.Prefix" attribute while you are editing the symbol. To do this:

• Open the symbol in the symbol editor.
• Select the "Part Attributes" command in the "Options" menu.
• Click on the "Name.Prefix" field in the field list.
• Set the value of this field to be exactly "$NONAME".

Click "Done", then close and save the part.

How do I delete an attribute field definition from a symbol stored in a library? There is no delete button and when I remove the value and come back, the field name still appears in the list.
There is no explicit command in the symbol editor to delete an attribute field from a symbol. If you have defined a value for a field and now wish to remove it, simply use the "Part Attributes" or "Pin Attributes" command to set the value to empty, i.e. delete the value completely from the text box. When the symbol is saved, any field that has no value is discarded.
You can however delete some attribute fields from the design which will also eliminate them from all devices appearing in the design. This is could be a dangerous action if devices need a given attribute to transmit data. To delete attribute fields from a design go to the "Options>Define Attribute Fields" menu.

NOTE: For convenience, the symbol editor remembers all attribute field names used during a session in any symbols it encounters and displays these names whenever you set a value in any symbol. When you follow the above instructions to delete a field, the field name will still appear in the list even if it is not stored with the symbol.

I have an existing bundle pin on a symbol and I want to add more internal pins in the same bundle. How do I do this?
You can add more internal pins to an existing bundle pin using the "Add Pins" command. The association of internal pins with a bundle pin is simply by order, so you have to be careful to move the new items to the correct position in the pin list.
For example, supposing you have a symbol open in the symbol editor with the following list of pins:

To add two more pins (say X1A an X2A) to the bundle B1, follow these steps:

• Select the Add Pins command in the Operations toolbar.
• Enter the text

[X1A X2A]
You should now see the following pin list:

The square brackets around the list of names is important as this signifies bundle internal pins. If you don’t include these, you will get normal visible pins and they will not be associated with the parent bundle.
IMPORTANT: This order is invalid because you have bundle internal pins following a non-bundle pin. The symbol editor allows this while you are working but will not save the symbol in this state.
Click and drag the items X1A and X2A into the position immediately after D2 (or you can position them anywhere between B1 and m, if you prefer a different order).
You should now have the following list, which has a valid pin order:

I have created my own library and want it to open automatically each time I use (start) HYPERSIM. How do I do this?
Each time it starts up, the HYPERSIM program looks in a number of places for libraries to open. Depending on your requirements, you can do any of the following:

• Use the “Auto-open Libraries” menu from “Options>Libraries>Library Operations”
• Put you library in the default folder where the common libraries are located.
• Put a "shortcut" to your library in the default folder.
• Modify the HYPERSIM initialization file to specifically locate your file or folder.
• The first option is the most convenient and simple to use. We’ll give a quick rundown on the following two options here.

When HYPERSIM is installed, a folder called "Libs" is created in the same folder that contains the program. All libraries inside this folder will be opened automatically when the program starts up. The only disadvantage to placing items in this folder is that they may become mixed up with the standard libraries provided and it becomes more difficult to track and backup your work. You need administrator privileges on your computer to perform this task.

An extension to the above method is to place a Windows shortcut in the "Libs" folder, rather than the file itself. This has the advantage that you can leave your own files in a separate location where they won’t get accidentally deleted when updating or de-installing the software. The methods for creating shortcuts vary with different versions of Windows, but the simplest method is to right-click on the file in the Windows Explorer and select the "Make Shortcut" command. Then, drag the shortcut file to the "Libs" folder. It can be renamed if desired.

How do I add a pin to a symbol that is fixed as a single-phase (3-phase) connection and cannot connect to a 1-phase (single phase) line?
Normally, when you add a pin to a symbol and set the pin function to Power, that pin can be connected to either a 1-phase or a 3-phase power signal. In some case the user may decide to force the phase setting to maintain a given set of data or for making a device readily available in the library. In some cases, models or subcircuit blocks only make sense with a certain fixed pin configuration.

To force a fixed phase setting on a pin, follow these steps:
Open or create the symbol in the symbol editor.

• In the pin list, select the pin that you wish to set.
• Verify that the "Pin Function" setting is Power.
• Select the "Pin Attributes" command in the Operations toolbar.
• Select the Phase attribute field.
• Enter the text "=1" (that is, an equals sign followed by the single digit 1) for a force 1-phase pin, or "=3" to force a 3-phase pin.
• Save and close the symbol in the usual way.

Some devices may not accept a change in pin type, so you must verify that forcing a given pin type is acceptable for the device definition.
To test the symbol, you can place one on a circuit diagram and attempt to connect an incompatible type of signal to it.
It is actually also possible to make this setting on a single instance of a device on a diagram without modifying the symbol definition. To do this, simply enter the same values given above into the pin attributes on the device.

How do I get my circuit to print out on a single sheet instead of being broken into multiple sheets when printing?
HYPERSIM allows you to create a "virtual" drawing area on the screen that can be of any size, independent of the size your printer can actually handle. If this on-screen sheet size is bigger than the printable area, then the diagram must be either reduced to fit on one piece of paper, or broken into multiple sheets for printing.
To change these settings:

• Select the "Sheet Size Wizard" command in the “Options>Design” toolbar.
• Depending on the other settings in your design, you may see a warning page about applying settings to multiple pages. If so, make the appropriate choice and click Next until you see the Border Scaling selection page.
• If the Border scaling option is set to "Scale border to match printer setup", then follow these steps, otherwise skip to the next section:
• Click Next. You should see the "Printer Page Mapping" options.
• Select the Advanced option and click Next.
• The Advanced page allows you to select how many pages your circuit prints on. Set the size to 1 x 1 printed pages to force the circuit to print on a single page. If this creates a drawing area that is too small, you can adjust the scale factor to a smaller number to create a larger on-screen drawing area.
• Click Finish to view the results.
• If the Border scaling option is set to "Fixed border size", then proceed with these steps:
• Click Next to view the sheet size. Unless you have some reason to want to change this setting, click Next again.
• On the Printed Output page, select the "scale to fit printed page" option and set the size to 1 x 1 pages. This forces the program to scale the drawing to fit on one printed piece of paper, regardless of the on-screen size.
• Click Finish. This change should have no visible effect on the drawing area displayed on the screen.

When I print diagrams on my black and white printer, lines that are colored on the screen appear as shades of gray on the printer. How do I get everything to come out in black or white?
When printing, HYPERSIM normally transmits all the color information associated with a drawing to the printer driver, which then makes its own decision how to use it. In some cases, black and white printers attempt to mimic colors by creating shades of gray. If this is not the desired result, you can make a change in the HYPERSIM initialization file hyperworks.ini to request that colors are always converted to black or white when printing.
To change these settings, edit the hyperworks.ini file (see below) and locate the "PrinterColors" keyword in the [System] section of the file.

The following paragraphs describe the possible settings for this keyword.
PrinterColors=Yes
This specifies that all color information should be transmitted to the printer. Some printer drivers may have their own color options that could override this one. If you have specified Yes for this option and are still getting black and white output, check the "Print Setup" options for your selected printer.
PrinterColors=ToBlack
If PrinterColors=ToBlack is specified then all non-white colors are translated to black when printing.
If the "PrinterColors" keyword is missing or an invalid option has been specified then "Yes" is assumed.

All of the options described here are modified by editing the file hyperworks.ini which is located in the same directory as the program files. The ini file can be edited using NotePad or any basic text editor. If you use a word processor such as Microsoft Word, make sure to use a Text Only option when saving the file.
The changes will take effect only after restarting HYPERSIM.
The INI file is a simple text file and the options are divided into various sections, each of which starts with a [SectionName] marker. The option you are modifying can appear anywhere after its associated section marker.

When I print diagrams, the signal lines come out too fat or too thin. Can I control this?
Printer drivers vary in whether they consider a line width of "1" to mean "1 screen-dot-width" or "1 printer-dot-width", so line widths that appear in your printouts can vary from what you see on the screen. The PrinterScaleLines option in the initialization file hyperworks.ini lets you specify how you want line widths to be scaled.
This option selects one of three possible ways of setting line width when a diagram is printed. The option that is best for your application will depend on the printer you are using, the scale factor and your own preferences. If this keyword is missing or an invalid option has been specified then NO scaling of lines will occur.
PrinterScaleLines=None

This indicates that no scaling should occur. A line that is displayed 3 dots wide on the screen will be displayed three dots wide in the printer's native resolution.
PrinterScaleLines=All
This indicates that all lines should be scaled. A line should appear on the printout approximately the same width as it appears on the screen.
PrinterScaleLines=OverOnePixel
This specifies that lines one pixel wide (i.e. most signal lines on the screen) will be printed one dot wide in the printer's native resolution. All other lines will be scaled. With some printers, this option makes the best use of fine lines for representing signal traces.

Copying a circuit into Word is simple. You need to select the desired circuit or any part of the circuit or any part of a design page, copy it using Ctrl-C or “Home>Edit>Copy” and pasting into a Word document. The highest resolution results are achieved when copying from HYPERSIM at the highest zoom level. The copied circuit can be resized afterwards in the Word document.
If the selection in HYPERSIM has text objects, then you must select "Edit>Paste Special" in Word and then select "Picture (Enhanced Metafile)".