Online Design App Adds Active Filter Designer

The company’s WEBENCH online design tool now includes Active Filter Designer, which allows users to design advanced, highly customized filters for all standard filter types. Users can sample amplifiers, download automatically generated documentation, use a custom assembly diagram, and build a filter. Active Filter Designer also provides a component selection tool that searches the company’s portfolio of operational amplifiers and generates a bill of materials for every design. The tool also contains an embedded expert filter handbook. Users are guided through the process of creating a complete filter in a step-by-step fashion and all necessary theory is provided in an integrated flowchart. Performance parameters can be specified by frequency response, group delay, or step response. The designer can then create all of the potential filter options, order and approximation, that meet the end requirements and present them as alternatives for comparison. WEBENCH is available free of charge on the company’s web site. NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR, Santa Clara, CA. (800) 272-9959.