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Embedded thumbnail for ESP32-S3 Design Deep Dive: Power, RF, and Layout Best Practices
How-To's
ESP32-S3 Design Deep Dive: Power, RF, and Layout Best Practices

Explore our detailed design review of a custom ESP32-S3 PCB. This four-layer board is built around the ESP32-S3 microcontroller chip (not the standard module) and includes an integrated LiPo charging circuit, USB-C with data line protection, NCP voltage regulators, and a ceramic chip antenna with a properly tuned impedance matching network.

NEW
Blog
Getting Started for Mechanical Engineers

Explore our collection of MCAD Collaboration walkthroughs, where you’ll discover how to synchronize mechanical constraints and keepouts, maintain traceability with advanced history and revision control, and streamline electromechanical connectivity through harness synchronization. These topics and many more are covered in this article.

NEW
Embedded thumbnail for Working as One for What Matters Most | How Benchmark Unifies Engineering Teams
Altium Stories
Working as One for What Matters Most | How Benchmark Unifies Engineering Teams

See how Benchmark Electronics uses Altium’s collaborative hardware development platform to unify its electrical, mechanical, and software engineering teams. By replacing manual processes, disconnected tools, and siloed workflows with a shared workspace, Benchmark unlocked a new way of working.

Blog
Are Your ECAD Tools Holding Back Engineers’ Productivity?

The article highlights that productivity issues often stem from tool limitations rather than engineer effort, especially as project complexity grows. ECAD tools that offer clear version control, cross-discipline integration, and workflow awareness are key to sustaining efficiency.

Embedded thumbnail for PCB Design Tips to Improve RF Power Amplifier Layout
How-To's
PCB Design Tips to Improve RF Power Amplifier Layout

Take a deeper look at RF power amplifier PCB design as we expand on our original 6 GHz RF signal generator tutorial with an in-depth design review. Discover essential layout optimization techniques such as switching regulator routing, feedback loop placement, stitching via implementation, and effective copper balancing.

Embedded thumbnail for How Altium's Assembly Assistant unifies Quantum Systems' Dev Process
Altium Stories
How Altium's Assembly Assistant unifies Quantum Systems' Dev Process

Quantum Systems develops unmanned drone systems for aerial intelligence and rapid, field-ready innovation. With the Assembly Assistant, their team streamlined a once tedious prototype build process, eliminating manual exports, file conversions, and unnecessary guesswork.

Embedded thumbnail for Creating Stacking Stripes for PCB Fabrication: Altium Tutorial
How-To's
Creating Stacking Stripes for PCB Fabrication: Altium Tutorial

Watch our new tutorial where we demonstrate how to place stacking stripes along the edge of a PCB and configure design rules to control clearances. In this video, you’ll learn how to create a dummy net, use the query system to apply rules specifically to stacking stripes, and leverage split planes on internal layers.

Embedded thumbnail for Empower Your Designs with Advanced Power Analysis
How-To's
Empower Your Designs with Advanced Power Analysis

Power Analyzer brings clarity. Agile Teams brings control. Combined, they help teams deliver reliable hardware with confidence.

Blog
7 Ways to Catch Rules & Constraints Early – Checklist

Discover seven actionable ways to spot and fix rules and constraint issues before they derail your PCB project. Using Altium Designer Agile, these tips help you build more manufacturable and reliable boards with fewer iterations.

Embedded thumbnail for Component Selection Process Tips for PCB Design
How-To's
Component Selection Process Tips for PCB Design

Explore our new component selection tutorial and learn Zach Peterson’s proven approach to finding and choosing parts that take your electronic designs from good to exceptional.

Blog
Do You Need an IPC-D-356 Netlist?

If your output package is Gerber-based, adding an IPC-D-356 netlist can dramatically improve how your design is reviewed and validated for production. Here’s when it matters, what it contains, and how to generate it quickly in Altium.

Embedded thumbnail for Signal Analyzer by Keysight Promo Video
How-To's
Signal Analyzer by Keysight Promo Video

Design faster, collaborate smarter, and catch signal integrity issues early with Altium Agile Teams and the Signal Integrity Analyzer by Keysight — both integrated directly into Altium Designer Agile. Check out our new promo video to learn more.

Embedded thumbnail for NFC Reader Testing: Flashing and Validating the Project
How-To's
NFC Reader Testing: Flashing and Validating the Project

Join Zach Peterson as we build and test an NFC reader board from start to finish. You’ll see how a custom NFC reader goes from manufacturing to working hardware, with step-by-step guidance on firmware flashing, power checks, and RFID tag detection.

Embedded thumbnail for Power Analyzer by Keysight Promo Video
How-To's
Power Analyzer by Keysight Promo Video

Unlock faster, more reliable PCB design with Altium Designer Agile Teams and Power Analyzer by Keysight. Integrated directly inside Altium Designer, this powerful combination enables fast, secure, and adaptive collaboration helping engineering teams move quickly, stay aligned, and scale confidently. Watch this short video to see how this software improves your PCB design process.

Blog
Avoid These Top 3 Power Distribution Failures in PCB Design

Power distribution issues can silently undermine your PCB’s reliability. This article uncovers the top three failure modes and shows how Power Analyzer by Keysight helps you catch them early in the design phase and how Altium Agile Teams turns those checks into structured team action.

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Blog
Peak Electrical Performance in Multi-Board Designs With Advanced Simulation and Compliance Tools

Moving from single-board to multi-board systems is a leap in complexity. You must manage not just routing, but power, signal integrity, mechanical fit, and regulatory requirements across boards. In this article, you’ll discover how Altium’s advanced simulation and compliance tools help engineering teams overcome these challenges and deliver reliable multi-board solutions.

Blog
Executive Insights Into Electronic Product Development Gaps You Need To Close

Electronics hardware development is falling behind broader product development disciplines due to fragmented workflows, poor collaboration, and limited compliance visibility. This gap introduces risk, delays, and missed opportunities but executives see real business value in modernizing electronics development through better integration, traceability, and lifecycle visibility.

Blog
Sourcing For High-Mix Low-Volume Electronics Manufacturing

High-mix, low-volume (HMLV) electronics manufacturing requires agile sourcing strategies to handle shifting BOMs, erratic lead times, and component volatility. All while controlling costs and ensuring compliance. Cloud-based tools like Altium provide real-time component visibility, BOM collaboration, and supplier integrations to help navigate HMLV complexities.

Blog
One Vision, Three Powerful Solutions: Introducing Altium Discover, Altium Develop, and Altium Agile

We are excited to announce the launch of three new platform-based solutions that will transform the way electronic products are designed, built, and delivered: Altium Discover, Altium Develop, and Altium Agile. These solutions are designed to simplify processes, accelerate innovation, and make collaboration seamless across the entire electronics lifecycle. Together, they realize the purpose of Altium and Renesas: To Make Our Lives Easier.

Blog
The Top 5 Workflow Bottlenecks Slowing Down Mechanical Engineering Teams

Mechanical engineering teams frequently encounter delays from fragmented communication, disconnected toolchains, and inefficient synchronization processes. This article examines five critical workflow bottlenecks and highlights how ECAD-MCAD integration with real-time, bidirectional updates can eliminate rework and accelerate design iterations.

Blog
Building a Model Context Protocol Server for Arduinos

This guide walks you through creating an MCP server that turns AI interactions with Arduino into a predictable, automated process handling tasks like board listing, compilation, and serial communication via a fast, menu‑driven interface. Skip the guesswork of prompt nudging and reduce the risk of unintended device issues.

Blog
Getting Started with the GreenPAK Introduction Kit

Take your first steps into mixed-signal design with the Renesas GreenPAK Introduction Kit. Ari Mahpour shows how to design, simulate, and validate a clock divider project, making it easy for beginners to start experimenting with programmable mixed-signal devices.

Blog
Smarter Electronic Part Sourcing for Automotive Purchasing Professionals

Targeted at procurement professionals in the automotive industry, the article outlines the evolving pressures of sourcing components for electrified and connected vehicles. It highlights Octopart’s ecosystem as a unified tool that centralizes availability, compliance, pricing, and lifecycle intelligence to optimize sourcing efficiency.

Blog
Stack-Up to Success: Avoid the Pitfalls

"Stack‑Up to Success" highlights how a carefully planned PCB stack‑up is foundational to preventing warpage, managing impedance, and avoiding manufacturing delays by clearly communicating layer construction, materials, and tolerance requirements to fabricators.

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Embedded thumbnail for Creating Differential Pairs in the PCB
How to Work with Differential Pairs
Creating Differential Pairs in the PCB

Learn how to create differential pairs in the PCB.

Embedded thumbnail for From The Beatles to the PCB - VOX Story
Success Stories
From The Beatles to the PCB - VOX Story

Dave Clarke, R&D manager for VOX, walks us through his story of designing VOX amplifiers for electronic instruments as well as his love for music and electronics design. Be sure to subscribe to the Altium Stories channel to stay updated on new videos. Altium LLC is accelerating the pace of innovation through electronics. From individual inventors to multinational corporations, more PCB designers and engineers choose Altium software to design and realize their ideas. 

Embedded thumbnail for Creating PCB Mounting Holes
Creating PCB Mounting Holes

Our PCB must somehow be assembled into the final drone assembly. This will be achieved by attaching our PCB to the motherboard connector and by special mounting racks, which requires precise positioning of the two mounting holes on the PCB.

Embedded thumbnail for Working with PCB Keepouts
Working with PCB Keepouts

When working in the PCB, there may be specific areas that you would want to prevent the presence of certain objects, such as vias, tracks or copper regions. All of this can be realized in Altium Designer by using the Keepouts feature.

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Discovering Altium 365
Design Review Use Case

Design reviews are critical to being successful. Capture design discussions through contextual commenting in the web browser or in Altium Designer to ensure feedback is recorded and actioned effectively.

Embedded thumbnail for Resolving Errors in the PCB
Resolving Errors in the PCB

We’ve looked at how to set up the Design Rule Checker to help us analyze our PCB design errors. Now it’s time to resolve these errors and prep our design to start generating output files.

Embedded thumbnail for Defining the Layer Stackup
Defining the Layer Stackup

The PCB is designed and formed as a stack of layers and the definition of the PCB layer stack is a critical element of successful printed circuit board design. In Altium Designer, the Layer Stack Manager is used to develop the printed circuit board internal design including layer-pairing, careful via design, any back drilling requirements, rigid/flex requirements, copper balancing, layer stack symmetry, and material compliance. This video guides you through creation of a layer stackup, adding the necessary layers, as well as adding an impedance profile.

Embedded thumbnail for Searching for Errors in Schematic
Searching for Errors in Schematic

Searching for Errors: Errors and mistakes happen to everyone - from beginners to professionals. So we always preach how it is paramount for your design to be validated before pushing it to the PCB. But luckily it’s pretty easy to find and analyze any errors using Altium Designer. We’ll take a look at how to find and analyze errors in your schematic.

Embedded thumbnail for Creating Net Classes
6月 2, 2020
Creating Net Classes

A Net Class is a collection of nets that can be used for creating a targeted design rule. So for example, you may want all power and ground nets to have a minimum track width to handle a specific current rating. So we’ll show you how to assign these nets to a NetClass. 

Embedded thumbnail for How to Transfer Libraries to Concord Pro
New in Altium Designer 20 5月 6, 2020
How to Transfer Libraries to Concord Pro

This video demonstrates how the Library Migrator can quickly move database and integrated libraries to the Concord Pro workspace. Your design can be organized and verified in the Library Migrator before pushing it to the cloud. After migration, the Messages panel will display any missing information.

Embedded thumbnail for Improved Impedance Calculator
New in Altium Designer 20 4月 29, 2020
Improved Impedance Calculator

The impedance calculator in the Layer Stack Manager now supports single and differential coplanar structures. This video shows how the impedance calculator has been improved with new coplanar transmission line structures, greater control over the dimensional properties of the physical structure, and modeling of Conductor Surface Roughness using Surface Roughness and Roughness Factor values. 

Embedded thumbnail for Propagation Delay Support
New in Altium Designer 20 4月 27, 2020
Propagation Delay Support

In Altium Designer 20.0, you can now selectively monitor propagation delay along the whole connection or selected objects, such as tracks, pads, and vias.

Embedded thumbnail for New Routing Capabilities
New in Altium Designer 20 4月 23, 2020
New Routing Capabilities

Advanced routing capabilities help you complete the most basic, as well as the most difficult, routing challenges. In Altium Designer 20.0, we’ve added intelligent control over pad entries that are capable of working with any combination of pad geometry as well as a new any angle routing mode that allows you to make beautiful traces that smoothly contours around obstacles.

Embedded thumbnail for New Length Tuning Engine
New in Altium Designer 20 4月 21, 2020
New Length Tuning Engine

The tuning engine in Altium Designer has been redesigned and is now better than ever. Tuning sections can be picked up and moved to new locations on the track. What is truly remarkable is that the tunings are completely dynamic and change shape and fill patterns depending on the boundaries and surroundings.

Embedded thumbnail for How to Assign Names to Polygons
Working with Polygons 4月 3, 2020
How to Assign Names to Polygons

For some polygons, it is not always reasonable to use an automatically generated name so a custom name is needed. With a proper polygon name, you can quickly find the desired polygon in a list and correctly set the pour priority in relation to other polygons. By using unique names, you can create design rules that apply only to specified polygons.

Embedded thumbnail for How to Use View Mode in Altium Designer Without a License
How-To's 3月 16, 2020
How to Use View Mode in Altium Designer Without a License

In Altium Designer 20.0, you can use Altium Designer in Viewer mode when signed into your AltiumLive account and no active license is being used. The Altium Designer Viewer license can be used by anyone with an AltiumLive account and no other licenses or subscription is needed. The license can be activated from the License Management page. 

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Integrating Requirements June 2025 Webinar
On-Demand Webinar 5月 28, 2025
Integrating Requirements into Your PCB Design Workflow
Join our webinar where you will learn about integrated requirements tools who can help you eliminate late-stage design changes, AI support through system requirements and integration of design requirements directly in PCB Design. Don't miss it, register now!
Streamlining Team Collaboration
On-Demand Webinar 4月 17, 2025
Streamlining Team Collaboration in Industrial PCB Projects
Join us for our upcoming webinar to discover how Altium Designer and Altium 365 can transform your team’s collaboration and take your PCB design projects to the next level. Attend for a chance to win free access to the Altium 365 Training Bundle.
PCB CoDesign Webinar
On-Demand Webinar 1月 24, 2024
Discover How Altium Designer 24 Revolutionizes Team Dynamics in PCB Design
Expand your collaboration skills and stay ahead of the curve with PCB CoDesign. Design teams often grapple with prolonged design cycles and coordination issues, leading to delays and inefficiencies. In the current landscape, design processes are hindered by fragmented collaboration, resulting in increased layout times and difficulties in synchronizing design updates.