News & Updates
Blog
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Properties Panel Routing
Routing is one of the most time-consuming stages of PCB design. Altium Designer has a large set of tools that allow you to do it as accurately and quickly as possible. This document will help you to learn how to manage your routing effectively and use it to its fullest extent.
Blog
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Quarter-Wave Transformer Design For Real and Reactive Loads
RF systems operate with specific impedance values across entire interconnects, including on PCBs. Not all RF components are packaged in integrated circuits with defined impedances, so impedance matching circuits and line sections are needed to ensure signal transmission between different sections of an interconnect. One of these impedance matching techniques is the quarter-wave impedance transformer, which can be implemented as a printed trace with specific impedance.
Blog
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Altium Designer 22.10 Update
We are happy to announce that the Altium Designer 22.10 update is now available. Altium Designer 22.10 continues to focus on improving the user experience, as well as performance and stability of the software, based on feedback from our users. Check out the key new features in the What's New section on the left side of this window!
Blog
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Component Warpage Causes in a PCB
A staff member at a PCB manufacturer once explained to me that they thought we were having an issue with a package warping. Unfortunately, component warping can occur both in a PCB and in components. In this article, we'll give an overview of warpage in a PCB, specifically in the circuit board and in the components.
On-Demand Webinar
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8 Reasons to Store Your Components in Altium 365
Working with local libraries seems like a simple solution, but we often don’t take into account the added time spent maintaining libraries and sharing them between team members. There is no good way to avoid duplicate efforts with component creation and no standardization to ensure consistent naming. Worst of all, there is no way to identify the latest component revision, and library files can be easily corrupted or misplaced. This webinar showcases the advantages of component storage in Аltium 365 to resolve the issues of local libraries and component management.
Blog
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RF Signal Chain and Link Budget Basics
If you're designing a wireless IoT device, and you know how to calculate the link budget, you can reasonably estimate whether your signal will reach its destination and be read by the receiver. To calculate the link budget, the designer needs to know something about all other sources of gain and loss in the system. Once link budget is determined, the designer can judge whether some modification is needed in their RF signal chain.
Blog
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Best Methods for Calculating SMD Pad Size in PCB Design
SMD components require precisely sized pads for soldering during assembly. The designer is responsible for ensuring pad sizes are correct, either by calculating them and comparing with footprint data, looking through datasheets, or by memorizing SMD pad size standards. If you have a component and you don't have access to the footprint, and you decide to biuld the footprint yourself, what resources are available to ensure you have the correct pad size?
Blog
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Can You Fix a Warped PCB?
Before we get too deep into this article, I’ll give you the simple answer. You probably can’t fix warping in your PCB after it’s already been fabricated. You can prevent an unwarped board from becoming warped during assembly, but only as long as materials were selected properly and the board is put into reflow correctly. We’ll run over some of these points in this article, and I’ll examine some points that might help you recover a warped board.
Blog
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What is an Eye Diagram?
The eye diagram is a useful measurement or simulation as part of channel compliance. The measurement shows many different factors that can affect signal behavior simultaneously, ultimately allowing for qualification of errors and losses in a channel. In this article, I’ll run over some of the fundamental measurements that you could manually extract from an eye diagram and how they reveal some strategies for improving channel designs.
On-Demand Webinar
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Fundamentals of High-Speed Design
This track is for the designer who is new to high-speed layout and routing practices and wants to understand how they relate to signal integrity, and how to get started designing for high-speed digital applications.
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What Skills Are Needed to be a PCB Layout Designer?
To readers who have been working in the PCB industry for most of your career, you have probably seen a very diverse group of professionals with varied skill sets and backgrounds. Designers might get started as engineers or as technicians, and some designers learn how to create beautiful PCB layouts in university. No matter how you got into PCB design, there are some important skills to know that will take you a long way towards advancing your career.
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Beginner PCB Design Mistakes and How To Avoid Them
When starting out with PCB design, it’s common to treat the process as simply ‘connecting the dots’: as long as connections are made, it’s not particularly important how these connections are made. Having reviewed quite a number of PCBs of other PCB design engineers over the last few years, there are common, unfortunately erroneous, occurrences between a lot of them. This article aims to illustrate the top five beginner PCB design mistakes and what we can do to avoid making them. Let’s get started!
Blog
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PCB Trace and Pad Clearance: Low vs. High Voltage
High voltage/high current designs carry safety requirements which need to be met by designers. Similarly, high speed designs need to have suppressed crosstalk in order to ensure signal integrity. The key design aspects that relate to both areas are your PCB trace clearance and pad clearance values. These design choices are critical for balancing safety, noise suppression, and manufacturability.
Blog
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Getting Through PCB DFM
In this article, we’ll discuss the key design features to implement, and steps to take prior to fabrication that will help prevent some DFM process pain.
Blog
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Level Up Your Design Skills - Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide Update
We are happy to announce the new update of our Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide. Whether you are new to Altium Designer or you want to brush up on some topics, the Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide will take you from a beginner to a master in PCB design.
This is only the beginning! This guide will be updated with new information based on user feedback. Let’s first go over the contents of the guide.
Blog
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Modeling Copper Foil Roughness in Altium Designer's Impedance Profiler
With the new layer stack manager in Altium Designer®, you can now include copper foil roughness factors directly in your impedance calculator. This is quite easy to do in the layer stack manager, but it begs the question: what exactly is the copper roughness factor? Which value should be used for your interconnects?
Blog
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High-Speed Signal Routing: The 5 Important Constraints
After you capture your schematic as an initial layout and create an initial component arrangement, it’s time to define your routing constraints. Doing this early will allow your DRC engine to spot rules violations before you finish your layout. Likewise, you’ll be able to modify the default rule set to meet your layout requirements. Here are the important routing constraints you’ll need to check before you start routing your board.
Blog
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CoDesigner and MCAD Component Placement On-Demand Webinar
Learn how to place components from the MCAD side and synchronize them with Altium Designer ECAD models, designators, and sourcing data to simplify your design process.
Blog
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How to Create a PCB Manufacturing Cost Estimation
Some manufacturers have very convenient PCB manufacturing cost estimation calculators you can use, but the real costs depend on a number of factors. If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re producing your own boards, or you are managing manufacturing, testing, and delivery for a new project, it’s your job to help clients understand the primary cost drivers for new boards. Here’s how you can get an estimate of your fabrication costs, both for local and overseas manufacturers.
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PCB Mountable Connectors: SMD vs. Through-hole
Selecting a connector is as much an art as it is a science. The artistic side is all about aesthetics and satisfying clearances, while the scientific side is all about signal integrity. For PCB mountable connectors, you’ll need to choose between surface-mounted or through-hole connectors, and you’ll need to consider how each type affects signal integrity in your application. Here’s what you need to think about beyond the standard connector specifications.
Blog
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PCB Via Current-Carrying Capacity: How Hot is Too Hot?
Trace and via current-carrying capacity are legitimate design points to focus on when designing a new board that will carry high current. The goal is to keep conductor temperatures below some appropriate limit, which then helps keep components on the board cool.
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How to Maximize Copper in Your PCB Design: The Pros and Cons of Copper Pouring Versus Placing
There is a saying in copper pour PCB design, “Copper is free.” It means a PCB editor designer must think in reverse. A board starts off as solid copper, and the copper you don’t want is removed. It is faster to build, less consumptive, and less expensive to make a board that is mostly copper as compared to the same size board that is mostly bare. Picking the correct technique will make the difference between an effortless or frustrating experience.
Blog
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Top 5 PCB Design Guidelines Every PCB Designer Needs to Know
What’s the key to designing a board that’s realistic on paper and in physical form? Let’s explore the top 5 design guidelines that you need to know to design your next manufacturable, functional and reliable PCB.
Blog
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5月 14, 2020
How to Highlight Nets in Altium Designer to Simplify Schematic and PCB Designs
Highlighting nets will help you simplify your schematic and PCB design. In Altium , there are multiple options that enable you to leverage this capability to simplify the verification of connections and circuit paths and make sure that the design you send to your manufacturer accurately reflects the printed circuit board you need built.
Blog
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5月 12, 2020
Keep Your Altium Designer PCB Layout in Line with Grids and Grid-Selection Shortcuts
The grid system in a printed circuit board design CAD system really is your friend, and if you haven’t taken the time to get properly introduced yet let me help you with that.
Blog
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5月 7, 2020
How to Panelize Your PCBs Before Lunch with Altium Designer
Whether you have a slew of PCBs to mass produce for your customers or a handful of project boards you wish to prototype all in one simple swoop, panelization is an effective way to bring high amounts of efficiency to your production.
Blog
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5月 5, 2020
Helpful Tips for Interactive Routing in Altium Designer
Before you jump into the software, you should know the types of things you’re going to want to look out for. Traces, connection lines, differential pair routing, and route paths can all affect the routing process of your board. Make sure that you’re equipped knowing, ultimately, what you want your board design to accomplish and furthermore, where you anticipate potential problem areas to be.
Blog
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5月 1, 2020
Altium 365 + Altium Designer 20.1 Released Today - Work from Anywhere, Connect with Anyone
In our efforts to bring the best experience to the PCB design process, we are proud to announce the release of Altium Designer 20.1, Altium 365, and Altium NEXUS Client 3.1. This release enhances the design experience by bringing the convenience and benefits of the Altium 365 cloud platform to Altium Designer.
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