Does PSIM support vendor parts and BOM output to help ready a product for manufacturing?

Albert_Dunford

We had a recent set of questions: 

1. Does PSIM have a library of vendor components to be able simulate designs based on vendor part specifications?

2. Does PSIM have the capability to compile a Bill Of Materials (BOM) following a validated design so the designer can order the parts from the respective vendor?

3. If not, how can this gap be addressed if someone is interested to use PSIM to develop and manufacture a product?

Albert_Dunford

The answer to these questions is interlinked. First we need to understand that one of the things that makes PSIM very useable is an abstraction of the nitty and gritty details of a full product BOM. It is not necessary to include bypass capacitors on ICs, gate drive power supply circuits, headers, connectors, crystals, etc. to get a working simulation of your power supply design. PSIM allows you to focus directly on the power conversion and controls. 

That being said you can still implement a relatively full featured analog power supply design, here we see a UC3825B push pull converter full developed in PSIM. (examples->PWM IC, if you want to find it).

We can easily export a list of elements used

However these elements will only have a manufactures part number if you include it yourself. There is no underlying database of parts for you to pull from to populate your simulation. Even so it would still be missing things like connectors as PSIM is explicitly not a replacement tool for a PCB layout program like Altium.

With regards to vendor parts there is a list of thermal devices 

 

These parts are thermal loss models and it is relatively complete you can easily add your own, here is an overview of the switch models in PSIM and when to use them. 

Please stay in the loop with us as we release some really interesting materials discussing component selection based on vendor data from someone like digikey, that will allow you to optimize for cost, performance, size, etc.

With all that being said, PSIM does not have exactly what you are looking for, but we are working on some interesting features to help with component selection which may see more functionality that you are looking for be included in future versions.

Yasha

Thanks for your thorough and honest reply. 

For your information, I used PSIM for my Master's thesis which was heavily based on simulations and PSIM was a great and easy-to-use software. I am currently working on my PhD and planning to push past simulation only and move towards developing a product using actual vendor parts; hence, my question above.

Another question that I have to help with my product development goals is to know what differentiates PSIM from MATLAB/Simulink. Should I use one or the other or should I use both each covering a different development phase?