News & Updates
Watch this webinar to learn how the SiliconExpert Integration in Altium 365 can optimize your workflows and elevate your design process.
Want to keep your entire team on the same page? Watch this webinar to discover how Altium 365’s suite of applications revolutionizes electronics design from conception to production.
Resistors are fundamental components in electronic circuits, essential for controlling current and voltage. This article explores their basic principles, types, and key applications, helping you understand their crucial role in electronics.
Efficient PCB design is crucial for avoiding costly delays in product development. This article offers practical tips and best practices for PCB designers to streamline their workflows, minimize errors, and ensure timely project completion.
Signal integrity is the backbone of high-speed digital systems. In this new article by Rafał Stępień, we break down signal reflections and how to optimize your designs with effective impedance matching techniques.
Tired of juggling multiple tools for project management? Learn how the Jira Integration for Altium 365 can optimize your workflows.
In the second article of the "Mastering EMI Control in PCB Design" series Dario Fresu explores how effective component placement can reduce electromagnetic interference (EMI) in printed circuit boards. He highlights strategies such as board segregation and careful management of high-speed signals and their harmonics to ensure signal integrity and minimize emissions.
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.
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!
Watch our webinar to learn more about the new application joining the Altium 365 suite. The new Requirements & Systems Portal will help align engineering teams to get to market quicker.
Looking to enhance signal integrity in your PCB designs? Check out our latest article by David Marrakchi, where he shares key strategies and best practices for achieving reliable high-speed designs.
Once you’ve finished your new project and you’re ready to push it to your manufacturer, you’ll normally be stuck in an endless email chain with an engineer, or you’ll have to share cloud links with each other. The cloud sharing and design release tools in Altium Designer and Altium Concord Pro are a huge help in this area. In this post, I’m going to take an existing project I’ve worked with in a number of recent blogs, create some fabrication and assembly documentation, and finally push this data to a manufacturer using Altium Concord Pro.
To this day, I still see many PCB layout “rules of thumb” that first became common nearly 20 years ago. Do these rules still universally apply? The answer is a firm “maybe.” The discussion around PCB layout rules of thumb is not that these rules are correct or incorrect. The problem is that the discussion around these rules often lacks context, leading to the always/never type of discussion seen in some popular forums. My goal in this article is to communicate the context behind the common PCB design rules.
As the operating speed of components has increased, controlled impedance is becoming more common in digital, analog, and mixed-signal systems. If the controlled impedance value for an interconnect is incorrect, it can be very difficult to identify this problem during an in-circuit test. However, testing is normally performed on a PCB test coupon, which is manufactured on the same panel as the PCB. If you want to get through board spins quickly and aid future designs, you might consider designing a test coupon and keeping it handy for future designs.
Altium’s DbLib support is one of the oldest and most loved features of Altium Designer for managing electronic components and their data. They’ve been present in the software world since before I could fathom the existence of Ohm’s law. Altium 20.1’s new Component Sync feature allows you to synchronize virtually any database or database Library with Altium 365, taking advantage of both approaches strengths.
If you’ve created your next great schematic, there is a lot going on behind the scenes in your design software. A schematic netlist is one of the central pieces of information that will be used in multiple features in your design software to create a real PCB. Your schematic netlist provides both electrical connectivity information, and reflects the functional structure of your design data in a single set of data.
An SMPS is one of those quiet (yet electrically noisy) devices that makes your favorite electronics run smoothly. Among the numerous DC-DC converter topologies, a buck converter finds plenty of uses for stepping down the input voltage to a lower level while providing high efficiency power conversion. A common question around component selection for these power converters is how to select an inductor for a buck converter. The goal in working with an inductor and other components in a buck converter is to limit power loss to heat and while minimizing current ripple.
GPS-capable devices range from your phone to your smartwatch; simply type in your destination and follow the directions. Simple, right? According to the Washington Post, we should all stop using GPS as it’s ruining the navigation centers of our brains. Despite the neurological effects on perception and judgment, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) aims to find alternatives to GPS to provide redundancy.
The list of features available in Bluetooth just got a little longer since the release of Bluetooth 5.1. If you want to incorporate a Bluetooth 5.1 SoC into your new product, you have two primary options for bringing this component into your board. The first is as an SoC that mounts to your board just like any other component. The other option is to bring a module into your new board—directly onto the surface layer. Here’s what you need to know about a Bluetooth 5.1 SoC or module in your next IoT product.
Get Started with Altium 365 with a step-by-step guide and videos to experience the most connected experience for PCB design and realization: https://my.altium.com/altium-365/getting-started/
Since its introduction in the late 90s, the USB standard has never ceased to grow in popularity. There has been a growing trend toward USB being a power delivery interface with data, rather than a data interface that can supply power, as the 1.0 specification originally intended. To supply the increasing thirst for power over USB, the USB 3.0 Spec with Type-C began implementing the Power Delivery standard, which you should consider using for your next electronics project.
There are many types of circuit board tests available in electronics manufacturing today, each having unique goals and characteristics. This article presents guidelines at the design level (schematic and layout) to enable the use of in-circuit testing (ICT) fixtures to verify proper component assembly. These simple test fixtures allow your board to be tested as its assembled, which helps identify and remove failed boards from your production run.
Technological advancements have been a hallmark of the past few decades, from the widespread adoption of internet technology to the smartphones and wireless devices we rely on every day to stay connected. Orlan Thatcher, Board Layout Specialist at Cirris Systems, could never have predicted the demand their services would generate. The company struggled with six different software platforms before switching to Altium Designer.
I used to work in a research lab that worked primarily with RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) and NFC (Near Field Communication) technology, particularly for the agriculture industry and cattle identification. These were very specialized fields; however, the lab also worked on projects which involved retail and various other applications for NFC. It’s an amazing technology that you might be using every day without thinking about it - building access to your mobile phone payments, for instance.
You need to define your PCB geometry in the context of your enclosure. If your board cannot physically be assembled into the final product, it doesn't matter how well laid out it is electrically. This webinar focuses on how the MCAD CoDesigner allows you to edit your PCB in the context of a higher-level assembly, allowing you to respect the relevant mechanical constraints.
In Part 1 of this article, I described the first steps that occur during the PCB fabrication process. They detailed the inner layer processing effort as well as the efforts that take place during the transition from inner layer processing to lamination. This part of the article will provide a detailed description of the lamination, drilling and plating processes.
There are still a number of designers - perhaps most of them - who have never toured a PCB fabrication facility. They are also unaware of the various steps that occur during the fabrication process. The purpose of this article is to describe those steps and what transpires in each of them. Part 1 of this article focuses on inner layer processing and the steps that are done prior the lamination process.
Watch this webinar and learn how to remove ECAD data silos to enhance design collaboration, efficiently manage all your BOMs, and reduce supply chain risks with Multi-CAD File Support.
Learn how to make informed decisions and mitigate supply chain risks with Altium 365 BOM Portal. Improve your time to market and proactively manage supply chain risks.
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.
Watch our webinar and learn how to design PCBs while staying compliant with US government security regulations. Understand the differences between commercial Altium 365 and Altium 365 GovCloud in real-case scenarios.
Learn how to make informed decisions and mitigate supply chain risks with Altium 365 BOM Portal. Improve your time to market and proactively manage supply chain risks.
Have you ever dealt with a component shortage or unexpected EOL causing a design change at the last minute? Watch our webinar to learn how to solve these problems and overcome production blockers with Altium 365 and Basler AR!
Do you need help with disjointed design and requirement processes? Watch the webinar and learn how Altium 365 Requirements Manager powered by Valispace connects design data and requirements for faster design with fewer errors.
Watch the webinar to learn how the SiliconExpert Integration in Altium 365 can optimize your workflows and elevate your design process. Make data-driven design decisions!
Watch the webinar and learn from Altium's Director of Security, Bruno Blasigh, and Renata Lang, Altium 365 Product Marketing Manager, about designing PCBs that meet US government requirements using Altium 365's GovCloud.
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.
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.
Looking for a way to reduce time and increase the accuracy of the manual assembly of PCBs? Watch this webinar recording for a transformative session and learn how XVP Photonics achieved these goals with Assembly Assistant!
? 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.
An exclusive Expert Panel Discussion on Altium 365 GovCloud featuring industry experts Mahesh Venugopala and Bruno Blasigh. Gain valuable insights on cloud security, compliance, and more.
Join our insightful webinar on Altium 365 Version Control System (VCS) designed for solo users, where Ari Mahpour will guide you through creating and managing projects on the cloud-based platform.
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.