News & Updates
Strong hardware starts with strong libraries. Discover how disciplined ECAD-library management dramatically improves design consistency and accelerates every stage of your PCB workflow.
As data rates increase, the risks hidden in your layout grow with them. This quick guide highlights the critical SI checkpoints that can save you from late-stage surprises and redesigns. If you design high-speed boards, you’ll want to read this before your next review.
Don’t walk into supplier talks blind. Use market data to benchmark quotes, check lead times and uncover alternate parts. This article shows how visibility can shift the balance and de-risk your BOM.
Designing rigid-flex boards is like solving a 3D puzzle of materials, bends and tight spaces, and via-in-pad might just be the piece you need. Dive into how and when to use via-in-pad in rigid-flex designs, and what to watch out for from fabrication to field reliability.
This whitepaper examines how next-generation wearable electronics are evolving through advancements in flexible and rigid-flex design, smart materials, AI, energy innovations, and connectivity. Discover what’s required to transform early prototypes into scalable, reliable products across healthcare, sports, defense, fashion, and enterprise applications.
Electronic parts may now cycle from launch to end-of-life in just a few years, but many systems are expected to serve for 10–20+ years. Here’s how to build a component selection process that aligns engineering, procurement and design for longevity and stability.
As component lead-times extend and obsolescence becomes a persistent threat, PCB projects demand more than schematic capture and layout tools alone. This article details how ECAD software with embedded supply-chain intelligence can: unify engineering and procurement teams; provide visibility into stock levels, lead times and alternates; and enable proactive risk mitigation within the design loop.
In complex electronic systems, managing data from multiple printed circuit boards can quickly become a logistical challenge. This article outlines a structured workflow for handling both board-level and assembly-level design outputs, ensuring clarity and consistency across fabrication, assembly and product-level documentation.
Learn the six essential topics every electronics team should address in design reviews to improve quality, avoid surprises and bring products to market faster.
From design to production, effective Bill of Materials (BOM) management is critical to ensuring smooth collaboration between engineering, procurement, and manufacturing teams. In this practical guide, we break down proven strategies for structuring, maintaining, and synchronizing your BOM to prevent costly mistakes and accelerate time-to-market.
Many modern electronics have multiple boards, and connecting those different boards and systems together are harnesses. Learn more about how Altium Designer can help you create harnesses for your own multi-board designs here.
We invite you to explore the causes of output voltage fluctuation. In this article we provide you insights on how to solve and prevent these issues.
In this article we will show you how to create step by step a digital laser range finder for your own. Everything is based on Raspberry Pi board.
Learn how easy it is to create multi-board projects. This practical project article covers the reasons for breaking larger boards into sub-assemblies and explores the various connection options available between sub-assembly boards.
In this article you can learn about light sensors while building an analog solar panel tracking system. This open-source project covers multi-channel design, window comparators, driving motors, and photosensors.
We are continuing our journey through the open-source laptop project. This article explains an initialization of CAD design process from the early concept and brainstorming phase.
In this blog we will show you the strategies to minimize the risk of damage to circuit boards during the initial power-up process.
Essential tips for high-speed PCB designs, and when you need to start being concerned about how and where you route your traces.
If you've ever wanted to mount components vertically, but without the expense of a flex section this article is for you. You can use an MID in your PCB.
Explore the basics of conformal coating with us. Conformal coating is a protective layer applied to electronic circuits to guard against environmental factors such as moisture and dust.
We have started a very exciting journey into the creation of an open source laptop project. This project will be an ongoing one, with our community able interactively participate. By utilizing Altium 365 users will be able to view, comment on, and download design files. This will be a great learning experience for new and experienced PCB designers.
Electronics designers working in small design houses or in large enterprises often encounter a common set of challenges when interfacing with mechanical designers. Continue reading to learn how you can best interface with your mechanical designer to get your projects out the door fast!
HDI PCBs take a particular approach to routing interconnects through multiple layers to ensure reliability during fabrication, assembly, and operation. The critical structure that enables this is microvias, which are prone to failure if not designed properly. In this e-book, readers will receive an initial look at the reasons microvia reliability has come into the spotlight and why HDI PCB designers put reliability first when routing through microvias.
Aside from impedance and annular ring calculations, one of the other major formulas specified in the IPC 2221 standard relates temperature rise, trace width, and trace current. THere is also the IPC-2152 standard, both include this guidance on designing for thermal reliability, but which standard should we use?
Striplines provide some advantages over microstrips as they take advantage of natural shielding and coupling from nearby ground plane layers. Although they tend to experience higher losses due to total confinement in the dielectric, they can be thinner due to the high dielectric constant used in internal layers of a PCB. Use our free impedence calculator to help you determine the correct width needed to hit a target impedance.
An optoisolator is a cool electronic device that can be used to pass information between a diode without passing an electrical current. There are many great applications for these, but do you know which one is right for you?