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Blog
Overview of the Gerber X3 File Format

Want to learn how the Gerber X3 file format simplifies data exchange by unifying assembly and fabrication details in a single file? This article explores the format and its role in streamlining PCB manufacturing.

Blog
Mastering EMI Control in PCB Design: How to Design PCBs for Low EMI

This article by Dario Fresu delves into effective techniques for designing PCBs to reduce electromagnetic interference (EMI). It covers key topics such as stackup selection, routing strategies, and grounding best practices, offering actionable insights for improved performance.

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How-To's
How to Design a PCIe Edge Card

Watch our new video where Zach Peterson walks you through designing a PCIe edge card. Learn about mechanical specifications, pinouts, creating templates in Altium Designer, and extending an 8-lane PCIe card to a 16-lane configuration—all with practical tips and a ready-made template!

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New in Altium Designer 25
Wire Bonding in Altium Designer: Features and Capabilities

During the Hardware Design Masterclass Conference in Wrocław, we showcased the Wire Bonding feature. Samer Aldhaher delivered a presentation, and now we're excited to premiere it on YouTube. This session explores the Wire Bonding feature and includes a live demo highlighting its basic capabilities.

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New in Altium Designer 25
Unlock New Design Possibilities with Wire Bonding - Recording Preview

Explore how Altium Designer simplifies advanced PCB designs like 3D stacked die in cavity. From routing bond wires to generating complete project documentation, this on-demand webinar has you covered. Full recording is here: Wire Bonding Webinar Recording.

Blog
Happy Holidays!!!

Altium wishes you all the best this holiday season! May this time be filled with joy, laughter, and cherished moments with your family and friends. We also extend our warmest wishes for a Happy New Year 2025!

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Altium Stories
Industrial Design Meets Electronics Engineering

Discover how engineering disciplines come together to create remarkable products with Altium’s powerful tools. Electronics, mechanical, and industrial design merge their expertise, as D+I, part of Capgemini, showcases their refined design process. See how diverse skillsets and Altium's solutions drive innovation.

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How-To's
Simplify Analysis with Power Analyzer by Keysight

The Power Analyzer by Keysight in Altium Designer simplifies power design by enabling detailed analysis of power nets and PDNs. This demo highlights how to identify and resolve issues like voltage drops to ensure reliable power delivery, all within the Altium environment.

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New in Altium Designer 25
Perfect your high-speed routing with Dynamic Phase Matching!

Struggling with phase matching in your high-speed projects? Learn how Altium Designer 25’s Dynamic Phase Matching feature ensures precise signal integrity and simplifies high-speed design.

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HDM Wrocław
Hardware Design Masterclass Wrocław 2024 - Autumn Edition

Altium participated in the Hardware Design Masterclass Wrocław 2024, organized by Rafał Stępień. Representing Altium, Samer Aldhaher delivered a presentation on Wire Bonding in Altium Designer. This slideshow highlights key moments from the event.

Blog
What Is Wire Harness Design?

Explore our latest article to learn the fundamentals of wire harness design, its key components, and how it ensures organized, efficient, and reliable electrical systems across automotive, aerospace, and medical sectors.

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How-To's
Pi Filter Formulas and Simulation Deep Dive

Learn the essentials of Pi filters, including how to size, design, and simulate them in Altium Designer. Host Zach Peterson explains the design equations for Pi filters, discusses online tools for accurate component selection, and demonstrates real-time simulations in Altium Designer to visualize the effects of impedance mismatches.

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New in Altium Designer 25
True Donut Pad Shapes

Check out our brand-new short video showcasing an exciting improvement in the PCB design process. Altium Designer 25 now supports true donut pad shapes, enhancing both your routing and performance.

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New in Altium Designer 25
Modernizing Engineering Workflows: Altium Designer 25 and the Future of Concurrent Design - Recording Preview

Discover the new features in Altium Designer 25! This webinar recording highlights the Signal Analyzer by Keysight, advanced Wire Bonding capabilities, multi-board design enhancements, and more, showcasing how these tools can transform your PCB design process.

Blog
How to Determine Ferrite Bead Circuit Model Parameters

Learn how to accurately determine ferrite bead circuit model parameters for effective noise suppression in high-speed PCB designs. This article explores key concepts, measurement techniques, and practical tips for modeling ferrite beads in your projects.

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New in Altium Designer 25
Dynamic Phase Matching and Tuning for Differential Pairs

Explore how dynamic phase matching for differential pairs works with the improved match length rule in Altium Designer. Learn key techniques in this quick tutorial!

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New in Altium Designer 25
Obey Rules and Auto-Shrinking Features

Discover how Altium Designer 25's Obey Rules and Auto-Shrinking features streamline routing, ensuring speed and precision while maintaining adherence to all design constraints.

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Blog
Concept Phase – Cooling and Airflow Part 1

Next step in our open-source laptop project is to explain how to design cooling and airflow. In this article, we can show you the first part of this process, such as airflow concept, fan measurement and clearance.

Harness Design
Blog
Create Connections with Harness Design

Many modern electronics have multiple boards, and connecting those different boards and systems together are harnesses. Learn more about how Altium Designer can help you create harnesses for your own multi-board designs here.

Blog
Nucleo Shields Multi-Board Design

Learn how easy it is to create multi-board projects. This practical project article covers the reasons for breaking larger boards into sub-assemblies and explores the various connection options available between sub-assembly boards.

Blog
Analog Solar Tracker Project

In this article you can learn about light sensors while building an analog solar panel tracking system. This open-source project covers multi-channel design, window comparators, driving motors, and photosensors.

Blog
Concept Phase – Initial CAD Design

We are continuing our journey through the open-source laptop project. This article explains an initialization of CAD design process from the early concept and brainstorming phase.

Blog
High-Speed PCB Design Tips

Essential tips for high-speed PCB designs, and when you need to start being concerned about how and where you route your traces.

Introduction to Open Source Laptop Project
Blog
Introduction to Open Source Laptop Project

We have started a very exciting journey into the creation of an open source laptop project. This project will be an ongoing one, with our community able interactively participate. By utilizing Altium 365 users will be able to view, comment on, and download design files. This will be a great learning experience for new and experienced PCB designers.

Blog
Ebook: Routing High-Density Interconnects with Reliable Microvias

HDI PCBs take a particular approach to routing interconnects through multiple layers to ensure reliability during fabrication, assembly, and operation. The critical structure that enables this is microvias, which are prone to failure if not designed properly. In this e-book, readers will receive an initial look at the reasons microvia reliability has come into the spotlight and why HDI PCB designers put reliability first when routing through microvias.

Blog
IPC-2221 Calculator for PCB Trace Current and Heating

Aside from impedance and annular ring calculations, one of the other major formulas specified in the IPC 2221 standard relates temperature rise, trace width, and trace current. THere is also the IPC-2152 standard, both include this guidance on designing for thermal reliability, but which standard should we use?

Blog
Stripline Impedance Calculator

Striplines provide some advantages over microstrips as they take advantage of natural shielding and coupling from nearby ground plane layers. Although they tend to experience higher losses due to total confinement in the dielectric, they can be thinner due to the high dielectric constant used in internal layers of a PCB. Use our free impedence calculator to help you determine the correct width needed to hit a target impedance.

Tag
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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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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How to Design a BGA
Via-in-Pad for BGA

We’ll teach you how to use Via-in-pad to reduce inductance, improve signal integrity, and improve power distribution system performance in BGA designs.

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How to Design a BGA
Using HDI Stackups during BGA Design

Micro Vias and Buried Vias play an important role in high density interconnection layer stackups (HDI Stackups). We’ll show you how to add via and create rules to allow you to take full advantage of the HDI Stackup.

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How to Design a BGA
Automatic Fanout With BGA

When routing a BGA it can be necessary to use automatic fanout to make the routing process easier and faster. We’ll show you how to run the automatic fanout for routing a BGA and how the rules can affect the outcome of the route.

Embedded thumbnail for Specifying NSMD and SMD for BGA
How to Design a BGA
Specifying NSMD and SMD for BGA

BGA layouts use two types of pads: SMD, Solder Mask Pads, or NSMD, Non-Solder Mask Pads. Here we’ll walk you through the differences and how to specify and edit them for your layout.

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Via Stitching
Via Shielding and Stitching

Altium Designer gives you full control over your via shielding and stitching. We’ll show you how to use our shielding and stitching tools, how to alter their parameters, and how to remove any unwanted via shielding and stitching.

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How To Work with High-Speed Projects
xSignals for DDR3 and DDR4

In a high-speed design, DDR3 and DDR4 memory chips can utilize xSignal classes to match track lengths from the controller to the memory chip easily and quickly using the xSignals wizard.

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How To Work with High-Speed Projects
High-Speed Tuning

If you use high-speed interfaces like USB 3.0, PCIE, or DDR3/DDR4, you need to use match length tuning to ensure that they work properly. We’ll show you why and how, as well as demonstrating the different tools for length tuning.

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