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PCB Design Basics for New Designers
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PCB Design Basics for New Designers

In this article, I’ll present some design basics that every new designer should follow to help ensure their design process is successful. Some of these points may challenge the conventional view of how circuit boards are constructed, but they are intended to help balance low noise signaling, manufacturability, and ease of solving a layout.

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Efficient PCB Routing Using Gloss and Retrace Tools

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.

Selecting Materials for High Voltage PCB Design and Layout
Blog
Selecting Materials for High Voltage PCB Design and Layout

High voltage PCBs are subject to certain safety and reliability concerns that you won’t find in most other boards. If your fabrication house specializes in high voltage PCBs and keeps materials in stock, they can likely recommend a material set, as well as a standard stackup you might use for certain voltage ranges and frequencies. If you need to choose your own materials, follow the tips below to help you narrow down to the right material set.

Embedded thumbnail for Shaping the PCB in MCAD
Working with MCAD CoDesigner extension
Shaping the PCB in MCAD

Through the MCAD Co-designer in Altium Designer, you can collaborate with a mechanical engineer to shape the PCB in your MCAD tool and keep it updated in Altium Designer. We’ll show you how in Altium Designer and in your MCAD tool.

Embedded thumbnail for Cross Select Mode
How to work with Selection
Cross Select Mode

Cross Select Mode is a unique tool that allows for cross-selection of objects between the schematic and PCB thanks to the Altium Unified platform. This makes it easy to look for specific components, as well as take advantage of component placement tools.

Via tenting in PCB Layout
Blog
When to Use Tented Vias in Your PCB Layout

There are some guidelines I see many designers implement as a standard practice, often without thinking about it. Some of these practices are misunderstood or implemented without best practices. Others are implemented without thinking about the potential problems. One of these is the use of tented vias, which is sometimes implemented in a PCB layout by default. Is this always the right practice?

Embedded thumbnail for Tools for Efficient Selection
How to work with Selection
Tools for Efficient Selection

Efficient selection tools can make a difference in how long and how clean your design can be. Learn how to utilize the Edit Select Menu tools in Altium Designer to take control over your layout.

Capacitive load termination
Blog
How to Impedance Match and Terminate Capacitive Loads

The idea of a purely capacitive load is something of a fallacy. Yes, capacitors exist, but all capacitors are non-ideal, and it is this deviation from a theoretical capacitance that determines how to impedance match a load that exhibits capacitive behavior. Let’s take a look at this important aspect of interconnect design and see what it really means to terminate a capacitive load.

Embedded thumbnail for Tools for Easily Selecting Objects in the PCB
How to work with Selection
Tools for Easily Selecting Objects in the PCB

Explore more than basic mouse movements by taking a look at the tools that Altium Designer has to offer for making selecting and moving objects in the PCB an easy task. This will increase your productivity and allow you to spend more time designing

Using Altium 365 Over Your Vanilla Version Control System
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Using Altium 365 Over Your Vanilla Version Control System

There are all sorts of version control systems out there that people have been using with their PCB design software. As discussed in Why Use a Version Control System, we looked at different options ranging for local hard drive storage to sophisticated online revisioning systems. In this article we will be reviewing the differences between a standard VCS and Altium 365.

Why Use a Version Control System in PCB Design
Blog
Why Use a Version Control System in PCB Design

Version Control Systems (VCS) have been around for many decades within the software world but can be surprisingly new to some folks in the electronics design industry. This article will cover what a VCS is, what it does, and why you should be using one for your PCB design projects.

IPC 6012 Class 3 Annular Ring
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Meeting Standards: IPC 6012 Class 3 Annular Ring

Designers often conflate leftover annular ring and pad sizes - they need to place a sufficiently large pad size on the surface layer to ensure that the annular ring that is leftover during fabrication will be large enough. As long as the annular ring is sufficiently large, the drill hit will not be considered defective and the board will have passed inspection. In this article, I'll discuss the limits on IPC-6012 Class 3 annular rings as these are a standard fabrication requirement for high-reliability rigid PCBs.

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Working with Polygons
How to Work with The Polygon Manager

It is important to have a high-level view of all polygons on the PCB design. The Polygon Manager lets you rename polygons, set their pour order, perform re-pouring or disable pouring on selected polygons, add/scope the polygon connection style and clearance design rules, and add polygon classes for selected polygons.

PCB fabrication notes
Blog
Decoding PCB Fabrication Notes

Sending a board out for fabrication is an exciting and nerve-wracking moment. Why not just give your fabricator your design files and let them figure it out? There are a few reasons for this, but it means the responsibility comes back to you as the designer to produce manufacturing files and documentation for your PCB. It’s actually quite simple if you have the right design tools. We’ll look at how you can do this inside your PCB layout and how this will help you quickly generate data for your manufacturer.

Embedded thumbnail for Assigning Impedance Profiles for Differential Pairs
How to Work with Differential Pairs
Assigning Impedance Profiles for Differential Pairs

When you assign an impedance profile to a differential pair you open up several options for control over your routes. We'll show you how to do just that, as well as how to fix errors that may pop up and how to create classes for differential pairs based on assigned impedance profiles.

Embedded thumbnail for How to Highlight or Select Net Connections in the PCB
How-To's
How to Highlight or Select Net Connections in the PCB

We’ll show you how to highlight net selections so you can easily track where connections are made. We’ll show you how to hide and show nets, and how to use the view configuration and PCB panels to view and highlight nets across your design, and how to assign net colors in both the PCB and the schematic.

HDI PCB design and HDI PCB manufacturing process
Blog
Design Basics for HDI and the HDI PCB Manufacturing Process

As the world of technology has evolved, so has the need to pack more capabilities into smaller packages. PCBs designed using high-density interconnect techniques tend to be smaller as more components are packed in a smaller space. An HDI PCB uses blind, buried, and micro vias, vias in pads, and very thin traces to pack more components into a smaller area. We’ll show you the design basics for HDI and how Altium Designer® can help you create a powerful HDI PCB.

Embedded thumbnail for Remove Unused Via Pads
How to Design a BGA
Remove Unused Via Pads

The Remove Unused Pad Shapes tool in Altium Designer gives you control over the via pads in your design. We’ll show you how to use it to increase the usable area of power and ground polygons, increase the density of conductors between hole rows, and fixing incorrect connections.

All About PCB Test Points
Blog
Is It Printed or a Component? All About PCB Test Points

Test points in your electronic assembly will give you a location to access components and take important measurements to verify functionality. If you’ve never used a test point or you’re not sure if you need test points, keep reading to see what options you have for test point usage in your PCB layout.

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How to Design a BGA
Tent Vias under BGA

When via are located close to component pads some soldering issues can arise, but this can be fixed with Tented vias. We’ll show you how to manually tent vias and how to tent vias through the Design Rules.

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Cloud storage on the phone
Blog
Using Altium 365 for Sharing Simulations in the Cloud

Post-layout simulators for your PCB are very valuable tools. If you’re working through a complex design, it’s a good idea to put it through some level of simulation and analysis to evaluate the design before manufacturing. This is all easy with the cloud collaboration tools in Altium 365 and Ansys field solvers thanks to the EDB Exporter utility in Altium Designer. These existing tools in Altium Designer and any of the Ansys field solver utilities give you a simplified way to share design data, EDB files, and simulation results with anyone on your design team. 

Manufacturers
Blog
How to Speed Up Your DFM Report Process in the Cloud

Experienced fabricators will tell you: any design could have some hidden DFM problem that will interfere with manufacturability, quality, or yield. Making use of your design rules is just the start of preventing DFM problems, you’ll want to collaborate with your manufacturer throughout the design process if you want to spot and correct DFM problems. Within Altium Designer, there are multiple reports you can generate for your projects that will help you summarize important information on your board for a client or a manufacturer.

Optoelectronics
Blog
The Digital Engineer's Guide to RF PCB Layout and Routing

With modern systems running at higher frequencies, incorporating multiple wireless protocols, and interfacing with many analog sensors, advanced designs require knowledge from digital and RF design disciplines. If you’re now starting to work in the RF realm and you need to design an all-analog or mixed-signal system, RF PCB layout will need to become a new specialty. If you’re a digital designer and you’re now jumping into high-frequency analog design, keep reading to learn more about RF PCB layout and routing.

Tracks on a finished PCB
Blog
Microstrip Ground Clearance: How Close is Too Close?

If you take a look at any guidelines for controlled impedance traces, you’ll clearly see that the trace width is calculated without any ground pour near the trace. However, most designers will state that unused areas on each PCB layer should be filled in with grounded copper pour. If you bring some ground pour near a microstrip, you’ve now formed a coplanar waveguide arrangement. So now the question becomes, how much microstrip to ground clearance do you need to ensure you’ve hit your impedance goals?

Blog
PCB Layout Guidelines for Switching Power Supplies and Regulators

In this article, I want to briefly focus on how power supplies and regulators are different, although this should already be clear to most designers. For a power supply and for a PCB with an on-board regulator, the switching regulator layout will be a major determinant of overall system performance. Therefore, we’ll largely look at some layout guidelines for switching power supplies in terms of regulator layout.

PCB Sharing - What Data You Can Share in Altium 365
Blog
PCB Sharing and What Data You Can Share in Altium 365

Altium 365 is giving design teams a new way to share and manage their design data. Most users are probably aware of project-level and component-level PCB sharing features, but sharing actually extends down to the level of individual files thanks to the managed content system within Altium 365. If you’ve ever wanted a single place to store and manage all of your design data, then Altium 365 is here to help you and your team stay organized.

Power Supply Components on PCB
Blog
How to Combat Power Supply EMI in Your PCB

Power supplies are one of those systems we all tend to take for granted. Everyone’s first task in power supply design is usually to ensure the voltage and current output reach the desired level, probably followed by thermal considerations. However, due to safety issues, EMC requirements, the use of higher PWM frequencies, and the need for smaller packaging, power supply EMI should be a major design consideration. With that being said, what are the major sources of power supply EMI, and how can power supply designers keep them in check?

Free footprint library resources
Blog
Leveraging the Free Footprint Community to Design at Lightning Speed

Designing footprints is a job most people hate. It’s tedious, time-consuming, and doesn’t result in much except, well, a footprint. Companies now realize this pain point and offering designers free, well-designed PCB footprints. Why would they spend their time doing this? In this article, we’re going to review some of the free offerings that exist within the PCB design community. Once you’re armed with this information, you will spend most of your time designing and routing boards instead of pulling your hair out creating footprints all day.

PCB Motherboard with Multiple Slots with RAM Memory Installed, and Other System Hardware
Blog
Designing for Multiple PCBs in the Same Project

The majority of our PCB designs sit as a single PCB under our Altium Designer projects. It sometimes happens that we have a single project that requires multiple PCBs with various stuffing options, but when it happens, a lot of us tend to get stuck. How do you handle the exact change across both projects? How do you guarantee those changes to be identical? This article will review an approach to managing multiple PCB designs within a single project, ensuring your single source of truth.

EMI and thermal challenges in 5G design
Blog
Designing 5G Devices

The next stage in the evolution of mobile telephony is here with the roll-out of 5G. The designer looking to incorporate functionality to handle 5G signals into their circuits will face some challenging issues. So, what’s so special about 5G?

PCB tracks
Blog
All About Your PCB Trace Length: How Long is Too Long?

The maximum PCB trace length you can place between two components depends on multiple factors, such as signaling protocol, component specification, losses in PCB laminate, and skew. With all this in mind, let’s look at where losses accumulate along the channel.

LDO
Blog
Using an LDO vs. Switching Regulator in Your PCB

For low power devices, we generally see two types of power regulators: a low dropout regulator (LDO) or a switching regulator. You can mix and match these at different points along your power bus, but there’s still the matter of choosing whether to use an LDO vs. a switching regulator in your designs. If you’ve ever wondered how these decisions are made and when to use each type of regulator, just know that there is more to this decision than simply looking at the input/output voltage/current.

Natural flux
Blog
What They Don’t Teach You About Fluxes

PCB fabrication is an extremely complex technological topic that deserves recognition as the most fundamental part of PCB engineering. Unless connectors, conductive adhesive, wire-bonding, or zebra-tape are used, in the modern electronics industry it’s always necessary to use some kind of flux during the soldering process to create an electric connection. In this article, we’ll discuss fluxes — what they are, what they are made of (yes, there is going to be a lot of chemistry, don’t be scared), how they should be used, and in what direction the industry is going.

PCB with ice for best cooling
Blog
Thermal Management for Integrated Circuits

As anyone who designs and builds electronic devices knows, the device will generate heat when it’s switched on. Wherever current flows through an impedance, energy losses will manifest themselves as heat. Integrated circuit packaging is getting smaller to meet the trend for more compact devices but at the cost of poorer thermal properties. This article describes the basic thermal management approaches to consider in your next designs. 

Blog
Anatomy of Latitude Part Two: "Thread with a Needle” in the context of energy

We continue to explore the magic of energy conversion in a PWM transducer. Why is it magic? Theoretically, in a PWM transducer this happens without losses, isn't that magic? A PWM transducer, like a tailor with scissors, cuts the “fabric of energy” into pieces, and then, like a sewing machine, stitches the pieces of energy into a dress - DC Magnitude. What is a constant component and how can we get it? Let's explore!

Pulse Width Regulation Module
Blog
Anatomy of Latitude Part One: Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) as a Result of the Evolution of Linear Systems

There are different techniques in the world of technology to achieve various goals, both final and intermediate. Some techniques are so successful that they are commonly used with high efficiency. Electronics is no exception. The greatest example is the use of Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) signals (energy), which is applied in any modern electronic device. To apply PWM effectively, it is necessary to understand the engineering difficulties that engineers faced in the past, and the thoughts and ideas that subsequently were combined into effective, complete PWM power solutions.

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Embedded thumbnail for How to Create and Use Impedance Profiles
How to work with Layer Stack Manager
How to Create and Use Impedance Profiles

Using the Altium Designer Layer Stack Manager, we will show how to create impedance profiles for transmission lines and how to apply them to the circuit board using the PCB Rules and Constraints Editor.

Embedded thumbnail for Creating a PCB Footprint Courtyard
How to create a PCB Footprint
Creating a PCB Footprint Courtyard

The courtyard is an essential piece when you want to create a PCB Footprint in Altium Designer. We’ll talk about what a courtyard is, how to create a courtyard, and how to format a courtyard correctly for your PCB footprint.

Embedded thumbnail for How to Edit Existing Tracks in Altium Designer
How-To's
How to Edit Existing Tracks in Altium Designer

This new design rule flags a violation when the creepage distance across non-conductive surface and edge regions of the board, between the targeted signals, is equal to or less than the specified Creepage distance.

Embedded thumbnail for Creating a PCB Footprint Silkscreen Overlay
How to create a PCB Footprint
Creating a PCB Footprint Silkscreen Overlay

When creating a PCB footprint in Altium Designer creating a silkscreen overlay is an important requirement. We’ll go over the standards for creating a silkscreen overlay for a footprint and the steps to creating one, such as constructing lines and measuring distance of objects and primitives.

Tuning
What's New in 22.7
Ability to Change Tuning Object Layer Properties

Design of high-speed PCBs becomes easier with this latest release. Now, when you need to quickly move tuning elements to a different layer, you can do so from the Properties panel with a single click.

Tuning
What's New in 22.7
更改调节对象层属性功能

本次发布后,即可更加轻松地进行高速PCB设计。现在,当您需要将调节元件快速移动到其他层时,仅需单击一次即可从Properties面板中执行此操作。

Simulation models
What's New in 22.7
Auto-assign Simulation Models for Components without Models

This latest version of Altium Designer makes schematic simulation even easier. System intelligence automatically recognizes SPICE models and assigns them to components from available sources.

Simulation models
What's New in 22.7
自动分配不含模型的元件仿真模型

最新版Altium Designer将确保您能够更加轻松地进行原理图仿真。系统智能自动识别 SPICE 模型并将其分配给可用来源的元件。

Paste
What's New in 22.7
Control of Paste Mask Output for Variants

Output data needs to be as accurate as possible. For multi-variant designs you can now ensure that the paste mask is only displayed where it is really needed.

Paste
What's New in 22.7
变量助焊层输出控件

输出数据需要尽量准确。对于多变量设计,您现在可以确保将助焊层仅显示在真正需要的位置。

Embedded thumbnail for Adding Designators for Assembly Drawings
How-To's
Adding Designators for Assembly Drawings

Designators for assembly drawings are added on the assembly layer. This video shows how to add the designators.

Embedded thumbnail for Stackup Material Library
How to work with Layer Stack Manager
Stackup Material Library

In this video we will learn more about the Altium designers Layer Stack Mangers built-in materials library, and how to add new material and use it in our board stack. We will also look at how we can save the user materials to an xml format.

Embedded thumbnail for Placing Footprint Pads
How to create a PCB Footprint
Placing Footprint Pads

Every footprints needs proper pad placement to ensure trace connectivity. Placing pads is the first step towards footprint creation.

Embedded thumbnail for Setting the Transparency for Layers and Primitives
How-To's
Setting the Transparency for Layers and Primitives

Customize your workspace by setting the transparency of layers and primitives in the PCB.

Embedded thumbnail for Create New Via Types Using the Layer Stack Manager
How to work with Layer Stack Manager
Create New Via Types Using the Layer Stack Manager

In this video, we will learn how to create new via types using the Layer Stack Manager, and how to create new Routing Via design rules using the PCB Rules and Constraints Editor. We will also explore how to use the different types of Via during interactive routing.

Embedded thumbnail for How to Create a Copper Board Report
How-To's
How to Create a Copper Board Report

This video will show how to create a copper board report in your PCB which can be useful for copper balance in DFM process

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