Welcome, Guest

Sign in to learn, create, and do more with the product you love.

News & Updates

Filters:
Tag
Embedded thumbnail for Use Cases with Dave Young: Multiboard and Harness
New in Altium Designer 24
Use Cases with Dave Young: Multiboard and Harness

In this video, Dave Young demonstrates the use of MultiBoard and Harness in Altium Designer 24, using a custom quadcopter motor part as an example. Learn how these advanced tools can optimize your design workflow.

Embedded thumbnail for Signal Analyzer by Keysight Tutorials - Verifying Changes and Finalizing the Design
Signal Analyzer by Keysight Tutorials
Signal Analyzer by Keysight Tutorials - Verifying Changes and Finalizing the Design

In this final installment of our tutorial series on the upcoming extension – Signal Analyzer by Keysight – we will guide you through the process of ensuring that your design meets all necessary performance standards. 

Blog
Signal Integrity Principles based on Altium Designer 24

Check out this article where Rafał Stępień dives into the essentials of maintaining signal integrity in high-speed digital systems. Discover key techniques like controlling signal reflections, reducing crosstalk, and designing differential pairs in Altium Designer 24 to ensure reliable and efficient PCB performance.

RSP Launch Cover
Blog
Launch of Requirements & Systems Portal in Altium 365

The Requirements & Systems Portal is now live in Altium 365! Engineers can write, manage, and verify requirements within the Altium 365 workspace. You can link your requirements directly to schematics and PCB designs to ensure all engineers are working with the latest data. Request access today!

Embedded thumbnail for Signal Analyzer by Keysight Tutorials - Analyzing Simulation Results and Correcting Violation
Signal Analyzer by Keysight Tutorials
Signal Analyzer by Keysight Tutorials - Analyzing Simulation Results and Correcting Violation

We invite you to join the third chapter of the Signal Analyzer by Keysight Tutorials. In this installment, we’ll show you how to analyze simulation results and correct violations to ensure your PCB design aligns with performance standards.

Embedded thumbnail for LDO Regulator Essentials: From Basics to Advanced. Part IV: Step Response
LDO Regulator Essentials
LDO Regulator Essentials: From Basics to Advanced. Part IV: Step Response

In this new chapter of the LDO Essentials series, Rafał Stępień explores the Step Response of LDO regulators using Altium Designer's Mixed Simulation. Discover how to optimize your designs for enhanced stability and efficiency!

Embedded thumbnail for Signal Analyzer by Keysight Tutorials - Setting Up and Running Simulations
Signal Analyzer by Keysight Tutorials
Signal Analyzer by Keysight Tutorials - Setting Up and Running Simulations

We are continuing our tutorial series on the Signal Analyzer by Keysight extension, diving deeper into its setup. We'll guide you through the configuration process and demonstrate how to run simulations using this powerful tool.

Embedded thumbnail for Kickstart Your Rigid-Flex Journey: Part II - Altium Designer Setup for Rigid-Flex
Kickstart Your Rigid-Flex Journey
Kickstart Your Rigid-Flex Journey: Part II - Altium Designer Setup for Rigid-Flex

Learn how to set up Altium Designer for Rigid-Flex PCB projects with step-by-step guidance from Piet Callemeyn. Master both manual and automatic layer stack configuration in just a few minutes!

Embedded thumbnail for Subterranean Robots Secure Our Global Food Future
Altium Stories
Subterranean Robots Secure Our Global Food Future

After discovering the Crover effect, Lorenzo Conti developed a groundbreaking grain-swimming robot to monitor and protect stored cereals. Using Altium-powered design, this innovative technology gathers critical data beneath bulk storage surfaces, reducing waste and enhancing food security. Join us as we explore how these robots are shaping a sustainable future and safeguarding our global food supply.

Embedded thumbnail for Signal Analyzer by Keysight Tutorials - Initial Setup
Signal Analyzer by Keysight Tutorials
Signal Analyzer by Keysight Tutorials - Initial Setup

In our new tutorial series, we will explore how the upcoming Signal Analyzer by Keysight enhances signal analysis in your PCB designs. In this first part, we'll guide you through a step-by-step installation process, ensuring the extension is properly set up in your Altium Designer environment.

Blog
Favorite Tools for BOM Review

Check out our article, where Lawrence Romine shares his top tools for conducting efficient Bill of Materials (BOM) reviews in PCB design. It highlights key features in Altium 365, Octopart, and ActiveBOM that help engineers avoid unsourceable components and streamline procurement.

Embedded thumbnail for EMI Solutions for Six-Layer PCB Stackups: A PCB Designer's Guide
How-To's
EMI Solutions for Six-Layer PCB Stackups: A PCB Designer's Guide

In our brand new video, our host Zach Peterson explores essential EMI solutions for six-layer PCB stackups, ensuring your designs achieve peak performance and reliability. Stay tuned as he delves into common issues, practical tips, and a detailed Altium Designer example to help you optimize your PCB designs.

Embedded thumbnail for Elevate Your Design Skills: Tips & Tricks for Success - Recording Preview
New in Altium Designer 24
Elevate Your Design Skills: Tips & Tricks for Success - Recording Preview

Unlock essential PCB design tips and tricks in our latest webinar recording. Learn how to streamline your workflow, tackle common challenges, and boost your productivity with Altium Designer. Check the recording here: COM August Webinar.

Embedded thumbnail for Finding Alternate Microcontroller Units (MCUs): Alternate Parts Series: Pt. 4
Octopart
Finding Alternate Microcontroller Units (MCUs): Alternate Parts Series: Pt. 4

Join Phil Salmony in the next part of our series dedicated to navigating the complexities of component substitutions. In this chapter, we'll demonstrate how to use Octopart to find suitable alternate microcontroller units (MCUs). Octopart will guide you in narrowing down critical parameters, helping you select the right component for your specific application.

Tag
Power component on PCB
Blog
Testing the Limits of Your LDO's Efficiency

If you’re designing a circuit board to be powered by anything except a bench-top regulated power supply, you’ll need to select a power regulator to place on your board. Just like any other component, your regulator has stated operating specs you’ll see in a product summary, and it has more detailed specs you’ll find in a datasheet. The fine details in your datasheets are easy to overlook, but they are the major factors that determine how your component will interact with the rest of your system.

PCB Laboratory Equipment
Blog
How Total Harmonic Distortion Affects Your Power System

It would be nice if the power that came from the wall was truly noise-free. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and although a power system can appear to output a clean sine wave, zooming into an oscilloscope trace or using an FFT will tell you a different story. When you take "dirty" power, put it through rectification, and then pass it through a switching regulator, you introduce additional noise into the system that further degrades power quality. If you’re a power supply or power systems designer, then you know the value of supplying your devices with clean, noise-free power.

Copper on PCB
Blog
What PCB Copper Thickness Should You Use?

If you’re an electronics designer or you’re just beginning your career as an engineer, the PCB stackup is probably one of the last things you’ll think about. Simple items like PCB copper thickness and board thickness can get pushed to the back burner, but you’ll need to think about these two points for many applications as not every board will be fabricated on a standard 1.57 mm two-layer PCB

Finished PCB
Blog
Should You Route Signals in Your PCB Power Plane?

I often get questions from designers asking about things like signal integrity and power integrity, and this most recent question forced me to think about some basic routing practices near planes and copper pour. "Is it okay to route signal traces on the same layer as power planes? I’ve seen some stackup guidelines that suggest this is fine, but no one provides solid advice." Once again, we have a great example of a long-standing design guideline without enough context.

PCB Routing
Blog
The Anatomy of Your Schematic Netlist, Ports, and Net Names

Electronics schematics form the foundation of your design data, and the rest of your design documents will build off of your schematic. If you’ve ever worked through a design and made changes to the schematic, then you’re probably aware of the synchronization you need to maintain with the PCB layout. At the center of it all is an important set of data about your components: your schematic netlist. What’s important for designers is to know how the netlist defines connections between different components and schematics in a large project.

Produced PCB
Blog
How to Compare PCB Manufacturing Services for Your Board

There are plenty of PCB manufacturing services you can find online, and they can all start to blend together. If you’re searching for a new service provider, it can be hard to compare all of them and find the best manufacturer that meets your needs. While experienced designers can spot bogus manufacturers from afar, there is always a temptation to go with the lowest priced, supposedly fastest overseas company you can find. However, there is a lot more that should go into choosing a PCB manufacturing service than just price.

Low-Pass Filter Arragement
Blog
Pi Filter Designs for Power Supplies

Pi Filters are a type of passive filter that gets its name from the arrangement of the three constituent components in the shape of the Greek letter Pi (π). Pi filters can be designed as either low pass or high pass filters, depending on the components used. The low-pass filter used for power supply filtering is formed from an inductor in series between the input and output with two capacitors, one across the input and the other across the output. Keep reading to learn more about their application in the PCB Design.

Hybrid PCB
Blog
How to Design a Hybrid PCB Stackup

The first question that should come up when selecting materials and planning a stackup is: what materials are needed and how many layers should be used? Assuming you’ve determined you need a low-loss laminate and you’ve determined your required layer count, it’s time to consider whether you should use a hybrid stackup. There are a few broad situations where you could consider using a hybrid stackup with low-loss laminates in your PCB

Battery and clock
Blog
Efficient Battery Power Supplies

Batteries offer a great power source for electrical devices that need to be mobile or located somewhere where connection to a mains electricity supply or other power source is impossible. The biggest problem with battery power is the expectation of users that the device will operate for significant periods with the need for recharging or replacing the batteries. This demand is placing the onus on the designer to improve efficiency and reduce power demand to meet this need.

Blog
What Target Impedance Should You Use in Your PDN?

A number of us on this blog and in other publications often bring up the concept of target impedance when discussing power integrity in high-speed designs. Some designs will be simple enough that you can take a “set it and forget it” approach to design a functional prototype. For more advanced designs, or if you’re fine-tuning a new board that has existing power integrity problems, target impedance is a real consideration that should be considered in your design.

Dual Power Supply Components Cover
Blog
An Overview of Dual Power Supply Design

Dual power supplies are circuits that generate two different output voltages from a single input source. The simplest method of generating dual output voltages is to use a transformer with two taps on the output winding. Bespoke transformers can have any voltage ratio depending on the number of windings in each part of the output side of the transformer.

Power planes inside PCB
Blog
Overlapping Planes in Your Mixed-Signal PCB Layout

With digital boards that are nominally running at DC, splitting up a power plane or using multiple power planes is a necessity for routing large currents at standard core/logic levels to digital components. Once you start mixing analog and digital sections into your power layers with multiple nets, it can be difficult to implement clean power in a design if you’re not careful with your layout.

Altium Designer interface
Blog
Follow Mixed Signal PCB Design Guidelines With the Best CAD Tools

High-speed digital PCBs are challenging enough to design, but what about mixed-signal boards? Many modern systems contain elements that operate with both digital and analog signaling, and these systems must be designed to ensure signal integrity in both domains. Altium Designer has the layout and signal integrity tools you need to ensure your mixed-signal PCB design does not experience interference and obeys important design standards. 

Blog
Get Ready for WiFi 7 under the 802.11be Standard

Just as WiFi 6 and 6E are starting to hit the market and new chipsets become available, WiFi 7 is in the works under the 802.11be standard.  While this technology still has not hit the market, I would expect more inquiries for experimental systems, evaluation modules, and surface-mountable modules to come up once the first chipsets become available. Now is the time to start thinking about these systems, especially if you’re developing evaluation products to support WiFi 7.

Protected electronic device
Blog
What Goes Into Rugged Electronics Design?

Rugged electronics need to take a punch mechanically, but there is more that goes into a rugged system than being able to survive a drop on the pavement. This is as much about enclosure design as it is about component selection and manufacturing choices. Mil-aero designers often use the term “harsh environment” to describe a number of scenarios where an electronic device’s reliability and lifetime will be put to the test. If you want to make your next product truly rugged, it helps to adopt some of their strategies in your PCB layout.

PCB Testing
Blog
PCB Testing 101: Important Methods and Metrics

There are many quality checks used to ensure a design will be manufacturable at scale and with high quality, but a lot of this can happen in the background without the designer realizing. No matter what level of testing and inspection you need to perform, it’s important to determine the basic test requirements your design must satisfy and communicate these to your manufacturer. If it’s your first time transitioning from prototyping to high-volume production, read our list of PCB testing requirements so that you’ll know what to expect.

Tag
Embedded thumbnail for Coming Soon: PCB Layout Replication
How-To's
Coming Soon: PCB Layout Replication

PCB Layout Replication allows quick replication of layouts for repetitive circuitry blocks in a flat PCB design. In this short video we will show you how this new tool (scheduled for release on December 13th) eliminates the need to do repetitive tasks manually or for various workarounds like snippets or multi-channel designs.

Embedded thumbnail for Coming Soon: Constraint Manager
How-To's
Coming Soon: Constraint Manager

Constraint Manager simplifies PCB design by facilitating collaborative constraint definition from both Schematic and PCB. Learn more about this new feature, which streamlines the process of setting electrical clearances and creating rules while centralizing class management for time-saving convenience.

Embedded thumbnail for Debounce Circuit
Simulation in Altium Designer
Debounce Circuit

Learn how to simulate the circuit, identify a common issue, and walk through how to diagnose and correct any errors found in a seemingly well-designed debounce circuit. 

Embedded thumbnail for Import Component Footprints Faster with Altium Designer. Part II: Using an External Library, Internal IPC Compliant Footprint Wizard, and Datasheet-Based Creation
Import Component Footprints Faster with Altium Designer
Import Component Footprints Faster with Altium Designer. Part II: Using an External Library, Internal IPC Compliant Footprint Wizard, and Datasheet-Based Creation

In this video, we will guide you through three distinct manual component import methods; employing an external library, utilizing the internal IPC Compliant Footprint Wizard, or creating one yourself based on documentation.

Embedded thumbnail for Import Component Footprints Faster with Altium Designer. Part I: Manufacturer Part Search & External Plugin
Import Component Footprints Faster with Altium Designer
Import Component Footprints Faster with Altium Designer. Part I: Manufacturer Part Search & External Plugin

In this video, we will demonstrate the first two methods of importing components into Altium Designer; through Manufacturer Part Search or by using an external plugin.

Embedded thumbnail for Buck Converter
Simulation in Altium Designer
Buck Converter

Learn how to run a transient simulation, analyze the waveforms, and measurement techniques you can use to determine a voltage ripple with a buck converter as an example. 

Embedded thumbnail for Edge Plating in RF Design
How-To's
Edge Plating in RF Design

PCB Edge Plating provides additional noise suppression and improves EMC. In this video we provide you some practical tips for creating metalized PCB edges in Altium Designer.

Embedded thumbnail for Custom Paste Mask and Solder Mask
Custom Pad Stack in Altium Designer
Custom Paste Mask and Solder Mask

Altium Designer allows you to freely customize paste and solder mask shapes, which allows you to adapt your design for non-standard component footprints.

Embedded thumbnail for Colpitts Oscillator
Simulation in Altium Designer
Colpitts Oscillator

Learn how to effectively fix errors in circuit simulation and other problem-solving techniques using a Colpitts Oscillator design as an example. 

Embedded thumbnail for Custom Thermal Reliefs for Pads
Custom Pad Stack in Altium Designer
Custom Thermal Reliefs for Pads

Altium Designer allows you to add, remove, and edit thermal relief spikes anywhere on a pad, regardless of its shape. Using these can improve soldering and prevent manufacturing problems like tombstoning.

Embedded thumbnail for Notch Filter
Simulation in Altium Designer
Notch Filter

Learn how to run an AC sweep analysis, execute a Monte Carlo simulation, and interpret the results using a notch filter as an example. 

Embedded thumbnail for Custom Pad Shapes
Custom Pad Stack in Altium Designer
Custom Pad Shapes

Modern components often contain pads with complex shapes. Altium Designer allows you to create custom pad shapes quickly and easily, and manage them like you would a standard pad.

Embedded thumbnail for Low-Pass Filter
Simulation in Altium Designer
Low-Pass Filter

Learn how to modify an op amp low-pass filter circuit for simulation. 

Embedded thumbnail for Design Reuse
How-To's
Design Reuse

If you need to shorten your time-to-market, reduce costs, and minimize errors in the design process. Then you need to make sure that you’re designing smarter, with design reuse blocks. Check out this demo to see how it works.

Embedded thumbnail for Flyback Converter
Simulation in Altium Designer
Flyback Converter

Learn how to use transient analysis on an example flyback converter and handle basic errors during the simulation preparation. 

Embedded thumbnail for Back Drilling in Altium Designer
How-To's
Back Drilling in Altium Designer

In this video, we will learn about Back Drilling technology, how to set up back drilling using the Layer Stack Manager, and how to set up the Stub Length sizes for back drilling by specifying applicable nets using the Design Rules Editor.

Tag
Z2Data Webinar Cover Photo
On-Demand Webinar
Bridge the Information Divide: Altium 365 Meets Z2Data

Watch the webinar and get a sneak peek at revolutionizing your engineering, compliance, and procurement approach with Altium 365 and Z2Data integration. Leverage comprehensive component data and advanced risk management strategies to enhance resilience in your operations.

Design with Confidence: Altium 365 meets SiliconExpert
On-Demand Webinar
Design with Confidence: Altium 365 meets SiliconExpert

Learn how the SiliconExpert integration in Altium 365 can optimize your workflows and elevate your design process. Hear from experts from SiliconExpert and discover insights into data-driven design decisions. Also don't miss the chance to see the integration in action and explore improved risk analysis and alternative component discovery features.

From PCB to MCAD - Designing a USB Isolator with Altium & SOLIDWORKS
On-Demand Webinar
From PCB to MCAD - Designing a USB Isolator with Altium & SOLIDWORKS

Dive into the world of Altium's MCAD CoDesigner and its compatibility with SOLIDWORKS. Watch the recording to explore a unified approach with a real-life project that will redefine your design process and find out more about how you can optimize your Electronic Lifecycle Management by bringing together all experts involved in product development.

On-Demand Webinar
Faster Design, Fewer Errors with Altium 365 Requirements Manager

? Join our experts to learn how you can develop products faster with fewer errors with the Altium 365 + Valispace Integration. This integration connects your live design and requirements workflow to implement design intent better and comply with industry standards.

printed circuit board, photo by the author
On-Demand Webinar
Learn to Collaborate Like a Pro with Altium Designer 23

Get ready to speed up your design process with new Altium Designer collaboration capabilities. Designing a PCB is a team effort. Engineers must work with customers, manufacturers, and other stakeholders to get the best results. You need help to bring your design to life, even if you're a one-person team.

The Best Way to Review Your PCB Designs
On-Demand Webinar
The Best Way to Review Your PCB Designs

It is essential to ask questions and review the design approaches used with your team. Design reviews are essential in the design process, but they can be inconvenient for team members and lack traceability or history. To create the best designs, you need review methods that are as cutting edge as the boards you're making.