News & Updates
Blog
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A Brief Study of Stubs on a PCIe Connector
Stubs are an important topic in high-speed PCB design, and there is a longstanding guideline that stubs should always be removed from all vias on high-speed digital interconnects. While stubs are bad for high-speed lines, they do not always need to be removed. What is more important is to predict the loss profile and frequencies, and to floorplan appropriately to try and prevent such losses.
Blog
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PCB Layout Cleanup Before Manufacturing
Once you finish your placement and routing in your PCB layout, it can be tempting to wrap up the layout and send everything in directly to manufacturing. The reality is that the board may still need some work before it is considered finished. The cleanup you perform at the final stage of PCB layout will help you catch any outstanding errors that can't be programmed into your DRC engine, and it gives you a chance to add any outstanding details to the surface layers.
Blog
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Insulated Metal Substrates: Building an LED Panel
In this project we’ll be building a moderate sized LED panel on insulated metal substrate (IMS). This light panel has three different white balance High CRI LED types on it, warm, neutral and cool. By changing the brightness of the different white balances, the light from the panel can be adjusted to match other lighting, making it perfect for film use - but also creating perfect lighting for electronics work. As with all my projects, this LED panel is open source, you can find the Altium project files over on my GitHub released under the permissive MIT License.
Blog
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DFM in PCB Material Selection
Every design should begin with selecting the materials that will appear in the PCB stackup, as well as arranging layers in the stackup to support layout and routing. This section of our PCB manufacturing andc DFM crash course focuses on selecting the right materials for your PCB design. Materials should be selected given the particular design requirements outlined in your specifications.
Blog
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How to Start an FPGA PCB Layout For Your Embedded System
FPGAs come in quad or BGA packages that can be difficult to floorplan, especially with the high number of I/Os often implemented in these components. FPGAs offer a lot of advantages in terms of their reconfigurability, but they can require a lot of effort to layout and route without headaches. If you’ve never worked with an FPGA in your PCB layout, we have some guidelines that can help you get started.
Blog
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How to Get 3-port S-parameters From a 2-port VNA Measurement
S-parameters are fundamental quantities in signal integrity, and an ability to understand them from measurement or analysis is very important. If you have a 3-port network, like a power divider or circulator, it may appear that you must use a 3-port VNA to measure these S-parameters. It is always acceptable to measure between two ports, but you need to know what exactly it is you are measuring. In this article, we’ll look at the relationship between the true 3-port S-parameters with a 2-port measurement.
Blog
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A Day in the Life of the PCB Manufacturing Process
Before implementing design for manufacturing, it is important to understand the underlying process behind producing a physical PCB. Regardless of the various technologies present in each facility, a large majority of industry-leading manufacturers follow a specific set of steps to turn your design from a drawing in a CAD application into a physical board. In this article, we'll cover the basics that designers need to know as part of our crash course series on PCB manufacturing.
Blog
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Addressing Skew Sources in High Speed PCBs
If you compile a list of skew sources, you'll see that fiber weave-induced skew is only one entry on a long list of skew sources. We'll look at this list of possible skew sources below, and we'll see how they affect the operation of your PCB. From the list below, we'll see that some of these issues with skew are not simply solved by paying attention to the fiber weave construction in a PCB substrate.
On-Demand Webinar
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Advanced Topics in High-Speed Design
This track is for the engineer who understands high-speed design requirements and wants to learn design practices to help ensure signal integrity and EMC with fast digital protocols, mixed-signal boards, and high layer counts.
Blog
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Should Ground Be Placed Below Inductors in Switching Regulators?
We love answering questions from our readers and YouTube viewers, and one of the recent questions we received relates to EMI from switching elements in a switching regulator is "Should a cutout be placed below the inductor in a switching regulator circuit?". Despite the variations in inductors and their magnetic behavior, there are some general principles that can be used to judge the effects of placing ground near inductors in switching regulator circuits. We’ll look at some of these principles in this article
NEW
Blog
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Why Modern Electronics Teams Are Moving to a Cloud ECAD Platform
Great products are built by connected teams, not disconnected tools. This article shows how cloud ECAD platforms enable real-time co-design, structured design reviews, and seamless collaboration across engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain teams.
NEW
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10 Questions to Ask Your Fabricator Before Submitting a Rigid-Flex Design
A five-minute conversation with your fabricator could save weeks of redesign. Discover the ten questions that can improve manufacturability, boost yield, and help your rigid-flex project succeed on the first build.
Blog
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Who Needs Integrated Electronic Component Search
Finding the right component shouldn't mean searching through dozens of websites and datasheets. This article shows how integrated component search helps engineers select parts faster while reducing sourcing risks and design delays.
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How BOM Portal Supports R&D and Procurement with DFM & DFC Analysis Throughout the Entire Product Lifecycle
The best sourcing decisions happen when procurement is involved early. This webinar demonstrates how BOM Portal gives both engineering and procurement access to live lifecycle, pricing, compliance, and availability data to drive smarter decisions from prototype through production.
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How to Design a PCB: From Schematic Capture to Manufacturing
This article walks through the complete PCB design workflow, from schematic capture and component selection to layout, design reviews, and manufacturing documentation. It highlights the key decisions at each stage that help engineering teams produce reliable, manufacturable products.
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5 Power Integrity Myths: AC Edition
The biggest threat to your power integrity might be outdated design advice. This article challenges five common AC power integrity myths and shows what really matters when designing today's high-speed PCBs.
Blog
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Your Design Data Has Zero Defense
Your design data may be more exposed than you think. This webinar shows how to identify common security gaps and secure engineering workflows with centralized access control and governance.
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Flex Circuit Coverlay: Design with Lamination Processes In Mind
Your flex PCB may look perfect in CAD but coverlay doesn't stay perfectly still during manufacturing. This article reveals why designing for lamination behavior is one of the most important steps in building reliable flex circuits.
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Integrated PCB Design vs. Legacy Point Tools: What’s the Real Cost?
As hardware development grows more collaborative, disconnected point tools can introduce data inconsistencies, traceability gaps, and costly coordination challenges. This article examines how integrated PCB design environments connect design, mechanical, supply chain, and review workflows to improve efficiency throughout the product lifecycle.
Blog
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Make Better Design Decisions with Signal and Power Integrity Insight
Signal integrity and power integrity are closely connected, with problems in one often affecting the other as designs become faster and more complex. This webinar explains how integrated analysis workflows help engineers evaluate PDN performance, identify potential issues early, and improve overall design quality.
Blog
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Optimizing Your Electronics Product Design Workflow and Eliminating Bottlenecks
Every manual handoff adds time and risk to the product development process. This article shows how modern design workflows automate routine tasks, improve data visibility, and help engineering teams focus on innovation instead of administration.
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Avoid Cross-Board Signal Integrity Issues in High-Performance Multiboard PCB Designs
Your signal may be perfect on the PCB and fail the moment it crosses a connector. This article explores the hidden SI challenges in multi-board systems and how engineers can eliminate them before they become costly debugging sessions.
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Proto-BOM in Minutes: How BOM Portal Accelerates Component Selection
Still building BOMs the hard way? Discover how modern workflows can help you create a prototype-ready BOM faster while improving visibility into pricing, availability, and risk.
Blog
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How to Manage Power Integrity and EMI in Complex Multiboard Systems
This article examines the challenges of maintaining power integrity and controlling EMI in complex multiboard systems. It provides practical strategies for managing return paths, connector transitions, and power distribution across interconnected assemblies.
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Agile Teams: From Design Tool to Product Development Platform
Learn how Agile Teams evolves beyond traditional PCB design workflows to support connected product development. This webinar explores how centralized data, collaboration tools, and governance capabilities help teams accelerate delivery while maintaining control.
Blog
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Benefits of Using an Integrated Design Environment for PCB Development
Using separate tools often creates inefficiencies and increases the risk of mistakes. This article explains how integrated design environments streamline workflows by keeping design data connected and accessible.
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