News & Updates
Design for Manufacturing (DFM) is a crucial aspect of aerospace projects. This process ensures high-quality designs that meet the unique challenges of the aerospace industry, such as extreme conditions and stringent reliability standards. Learn more about essential DFM tips in our brand-new article.
Curious about the intersection of mechanical and electrical design? Both are crucial in the PCB design process, especially for multi-board systems. Read our latest article to learn how ECAD and MCAD can address significant challenges during PCB preparation.
Discover everything you need to know about Altium 365 and experience our suite of applications for secure, seamless, and streamlined collaboration. Visit now to explore how to streamline your electronic product development.
Automated measurements are no longer tough. With our Mixed Simulation mode, everything is easier. Learn more about this feature based on DC-DC buck converter design in this brand new article.
In the dynamic field of electronics design, Altium Designer stands out as a pioneer, continuously advancing the boundaries of PCB (Printed Circuit Board) design. Discover the latest innovations in 3D-MID design, high-speed design, and interactive routing in this new article by David Marrakchi.
Check out our new article explaining how to ensure sufficient pad area for soldering, manage misregistration tolerance, and maintain proper solder dams between components. It also highlights the role of collaboration with fabrication houses and the use of CAD tools in defining land patterns for advanced electronics designs.
We continue our exploration of the Pi.MX8 open-source computer module project. In this new installment, we focus on routing planning and then cover all the layers' routing with all the details you need to know if you want to prepare a similar project.
Check our compilation of essential resources you'll need to use blind and buried vias successfully in an HDI PCB. In our brand new article, we present the main and most valuable information about this technology, which may not be new but is still highly useful in High-Density Interconnect projects.
Discover how Penn Electric Racing builds award-winning, fully electric racecars with Altium 365, pushing the boundaries of technology and design.
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.
An essential aspect of project management is time management, especially when your design team is working remotely. Your time management strategy is team-based and individual, but time can easily get spent on important tasks when working as part of a team. So how can you streamline important collaboration tasks for your design team to increase productivity?
In these days of easily-available internet and quarantines, everyone is working remotely. It’s nice being able to spend time with family and regain control over your schedule, but keeping track of projects and revisions while securing user access feels like its own job. With the right set of project and data management tools, you can easily share your data with collaborators without tracking email chains.
When I started using my Altium 365 Workspace for collaboration, I found I could make things run more smoothly when I kept things organized. However, I prevented any issues thanks to all the organization tools built into the Explorer panel within Altium Designer. Let’s take a look at how you can get the most value out of your Altium 365 Workspace in terms of organization and access management.
PCB manufacturing is competitive, and there is plenty of worldwide manufacturing capacity for new boards. If you’re looking for a manufacturer for your next project, it can be difficult to determine who is the best option to produce your board. Different fabricators and assemblers offer different levels of service, different capabilities, and access to different processes and materials. There are a lot of options to consider when selecting a manufacturer for your project.
Ever since I started using Github and Google Docs, I fell in love with revision control. Instead of keeping multiple copies of essential files and time-stamping every revision, revision tracking information gets stored alongside the file. This environment works great for code, spreadsheets, and documents, and Altium brings these same features into PCB design.
With advances in industrial automation, automotive technology, remote sensing, and much more, image processing is taking center stage in many embedded systems. Image processing with older video systems was difficult or impossible due to the low quality of many imaging systems with perpetual uptime. Newer systems provide video with higher frame rates and higher resolution images, but these systems still needed to connect directly to a computer in order to enable any useful image processing applications.
EDA tools have come a long way since the advent of personal computing. Now advanced routing features like auto-routers, interactive routing, length tuning, and pin-swapping are helping designers stay productive, especially as device and trace densities increase. Routing is normally restricted to 45-degree or right-angle turns with typical layout and routing tools, but more advanced PCB design software allows users to route at any angle they like. So which routing style should you use, and what are the advantages of any angle routing?
If you do a search for “Hardware-in-the-Loop” testing, you will frequently find examples of complex, real-time systems. Article from National Instruments, for example, gives a nice explanation and background on what hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) is, and provides an example of testing electronic control units within an automobile. In this article, we will be focusing on a smaller, more bite-sized version of HIL testing concepts.
If you’re an antenna designer, then you’re likely familiar with all aspects of near-field vs. far-field radiation. Given the litany of radiated EMI problems that cause noise within and outside of an electronic device, one might suddenly realize their new product is acting like a strong antenna. To understand how EMI affects your circuits, it helps to understand exactly how near-field vs. far-field radiation from your PCB affects your ability to pass EMC checks and affects your circuits.
How often have you started down the PCB development process and been bogged down by time-consuming administrative tasks? Once you get ready for production, working through a design review and correcting any DFM problems takes its own share of time. With hastening product development timelines and shorter product life cycles comes the pressure to increase PCB prototype iteration speed without sacrificing cost or quality. So how can PCB design teams keep their development schedules on track without sacrificing quality or risking a failed prototyping run?
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, or so the aphorism goes. I think it’s worth noting that the first step is the most difficult to take. Analysis Paralysis is especially true when dealing with a new software package, including the recent release of Concord Pro. The recent version has brought with it a deluge of interest and enthusiasm in such a phenomenal tool. But I must say, Altium hit this one out of the park.
When you need to pass EMC certification and your new product is being crippled by a mysterious source of EMI, you’ll probably start considering a complete product redesign. Your stackup, trace geometry, and component arrangement are good places to start, but there might be more you can do to suppress specific sources of EMI. There are many different types of EMI filters that you can easily place in your design, and that will help suppress EMI in a variety of frequency ranges.
Previously, I described the PCB fabrication operations relative to inner layer processing, lamination, drilling, and plating. The last step in the process is outer layer processing which is described below. Once the desired plated copper thickness of a PCB has been achieved, it’s necessary to etch away the copper between the features in order to define the outer layer pattern.
There are many factors at play in determining the impact of inductance on high-frequency power distribution systems. Two topic areas, inductance of the decoupling capacitor and inductance of the power planes, were addressed in earlier articles. This article will focus on the inductance of the capacitor footprint and via inductance from the capacitor footprint back to the PCB power planes.
High-speed buses, whether single-ended or differential, can experience any number of signal integrity problems. A primary problem created by propagating signals is crosstalk, where a signal superimposes itself on a nearby trace. The industry-standard PCB design tools in Altium Designer® already include a post-layout simulator for examining crosstalk. Still, you can speed up crosstalk analysis in parallel buses when you use a powerful field solver.
Any time-dependent physical system with feedback and gain has conditions under which the system will reach stable behavior. Amplifier stability extends these concepts to amplifiers, where the system output can grow to an undesired saturated state due to unintended feedback. If you use the right design and simulation tools, you can easily account for potential instability in your circuit models before you create your layout.
We design products not just PCBs requiring effective collaboration between MCAD and ECAD engineers. We need to consider how we can reduce the likelihood of errors when placing critical design components. Component placement in the context of enclosures can be easily handled in an MCAD environment while it is more difficult to achieve in the ECAD domain. 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.
Many factors can affect your supply chain. Currently, supply disruptions are being felt due to the effect of the Covid-19 Pandemic. In this webinar, learn how Concord Pro on Altium 365 can mitigate disruptions in your supply chain and help you stay on schedule and budget for your designs.
When you’re done creating a new board, it’s time to send your design data to the manufacturer. Before releasing your designs, you’ll want to make sure that everything is ready and works as intended. In this informative webinar, we’ll review some of the must-have checks before sending your output data for fabrication.
What most people don’t seem to grasp is that every aspect of the PCB is critical. It all plays a significant part in the operation of the final product. The layer stack is no different. We need to keep in mind materials and the intricacies therein, including thickness, weave, dielectric constants, and more. A proper layer stack is needed for each and every design, so it's important to know how to navigate the layer stack manager and all of its features.
Supply shortages have become and continue to be a common problem, especially when it comes to the world of electronics. It's hard to get all the different components for our boards. Heck! It's even tough to get the board themselves too! When electronic components become obsolete or out of stock, design and production can suffer lengthy delays. With current supply chain delays and with an average of 15 end-of-life notices issued every day, obtaining the parts you need is a challenge.
When you’re done creating a new board, it’s time to send your design data to the manufacturer. Before releasing your designs, you’ll want to make sure that everything is ready and works as intended. In this informative video, we’ll review some of the must-have checks before sending your output data for fabrication.
The primary goal of your traces is to carry signals throughout your board without losses. To do this properly, you must familiarize yourself with the requirements for signals on the printed circuit board and how to optimize the topology of the board in terms of signal integrity. We will analyze the most popular routing cases applicable for using the Gloss and Retrace tools in Altium Designer to optimize your signal integrity.
With ever increasing speeds in high-speed data systems comes a couple of PCB layout challenges. High-speed busses like DDR, VME, PCIe just to mention a few can all reach data transfer speeds that require strict timing with very tight tolerances, thereby leaving very little slack in the PCB layout. Watch this on-demand webinar to learn why it's imperative to match track lengths in high-speed data systems and differential signals. You’ll see how to properly define PCB length matching and time delay constraints, and how to effectively route high-speed signals in Altium Designer®.
SPICE simulation saves you critical time in the prototyping phase. Understanding your simulation interface makes it simple to analyze how your circuits work in different scenarios. Altium Designer provides an intuitive, dedicated interface to support your simulation verification, setup, and analysis directly in your schematic environment. You also benefit from growing support for popular model formats, as well as generic models, simplifying circuit definition and simulation.
The primary source of high-speed problems is not due to high clock frequency but rather the fast rise and fall times of component signals. With fast edge rates, reflections may occur at the receiver side, and when the board routing is dense, crosstalk may become a problem. During this webinar, you'll sharpen your knowledge and develop new skills that you can use to design High-Speed PCB's more efficiently and effectively.
The primary source of high-speed problems is not due to high clock frequency but rather the fast rise and fall times of component signals. With fast edge rates, reflections may occur at the receiver side, and when the board routing is dense, crosstalk may become a problem. During this webinar, you'll sharpen your knowledge and develop new skills that you can use to design High-Speed PCB's more efficiently and effectively.
Kinetic Vision, a Cincinnati-based design, engineering, and development firm, is an innovator’s one-stop shop for transforming even the wildest ideas into real products. The company’s design approach keeps everything in-house, including industrial design, mechanical, and electrical design, as well as, engineering, hardware/software development, machine learning, and sometimes even short-run production. Watch this webinar to learn how Kinetic Vision uses the Altium 365 platform to enable a connected and frictionless PCB design experience, increasing their productivity 5 times even
A heavy focus is usually put on managing your design data, but what about managing your design team? A mismanaged design team can lead to a disorganized and inaccurate design library and data. Watch this webinar to see how Altium 365 can help you to organize users into access restricted groups, manage design and designer access rights, avoid design conflicts when multiple members are working on the same design, and standardize your entire project using templates
Working between the Electronic and Mechanical design domains brings unique challenges. ECAD and MCAD tools have different design objectives and have evolved down different paths, and so have the way they store and manage their design and project data. To successfully design these products, the designers must fluidly pass design changes back and forth between the ECAD and MCAD domains beyond outdated file exchanges.
Getting started with design rules can sometimes be a difficult task, but it doesn’t have to be. Altium Designer has added a new design rules user interface along with a new way to define rules, while not compromising past methods. Now, rules and constraints have a design-centric view rather than a rules-centric view which allows for easier visualization and is less prone to error. Watch this video to learn how you can best utilize the improved Rules 2.0 design rule interface.
Working between the Electronic and Mechanical design domains brings unique challenges. ECAD and MCAD tools have different design objectives and have evolved down different paths, and so has the way they store and manage their design and project data. Watch this video to learn about seamless ECAD/MCAD Collaboration on the project, how to comments for other design teams and how to review, Approve or Reject design changes from your mechanical engineer.