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Stack-Up to Success: Avoid the Pitfalls

"Stack‑Up to Success" highlights how a carefully planned PCB stack‑up is foundational to preventing warpage, managing impedance, and avoiding manufacturing delays by clearly communicating layer construction, materials, and tolerance requirements to fabricators.

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New in Altium Designer 25
Coming Soon: Sawtooth Rounding Support for Length Tuning

Sawtooth Rounding for Length Tuning improves signal‑path accuracy by applying controlled corner‑rounding to sawtooth geometries during both Interactive Length Tuning and within‑pair matching in the Auto Tuning engine. Discover this capability and additional innovations on our Coming Soon page.

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New in Altium Designer 25
Coming Soon: Z-Axis Clearance Rule

The Z-Axis Clearance Rule checks the shortest distance between copper features on different layers in a PCB design. It is available in both the Constraint Manager and the legacy PCB Rules Editor. Discover more new features in Altium on our Coming Soon Page.

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New in Altium Designer 25
Coming Soon: Advanced Polygon Pour Engine

Now supports true arcs instead of approximated curves in copper pours. This enhanced engine marks a major advancement in the polygon pour process in Altium Designer, delivering smoother and more accurate copper shapes. Native arc rendering improves visual quality and helps ensure cleaner, more professional PCB designs.

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How-To's
How to Design Rigid-Flex PCB Stackups from Scratch

Watch this tutorial to learn the fundamentals of Rigid-Flex design. We cover everything from understanding polyimide materials and adhesive layers to building complex, multi-layer Rigid-Flex constructions that are ready for manufacturing.

Blog
How to Effectively Use Jira for Hardware Development Projects

Originally built for software development, Jira has become a popular tool for agile project management across various industries. Our new article explores how hardware teams can leverage core Jira features and adapt agile principles to suit the unique needs of hardware development.

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How-To's
How to Draw Antipads - Complete Tutorial

Discover how to draw and define antipads in Altium with this complete tutorial. Learn three different methods for creating antipads around vias. From simple design rules to advanced polygon cutouts for both basic and complex PCB designs.

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How-To's
Do PCB Manufacturers Actually Look at Fabrication Drawings?

Explore this in-depth tutorial featuring real fabrication drawings, stackup specifications, and drill tables - all created using Altium Designer’s Draftsman tool. Learn essential insights into PCB data management and manufacturing requirements from an industry perspective.

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How-To's
Compensating Transmission Line Losses in a PCB Calculator

This tutorial uncovers the key difference between ideal, lossless impedance calculations and real-world signal behavior giving you practical techniques to design controlled impedance PCBs that deliver reliable performance.

Blog
How to Make Your PCB Layout AOI and X-Ray Friendly

Designing for inspection is key to reliable manufacturing. This article covers practical PCB layout tips to optimize your board for AOI and X-ray inspection helping you reduce defects, false positives, and production delays.

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How-To's
How Close Can You Bring a Reference Plane?

Explore our in-depth investigation into practical simulations using both Altium Designer and Polar Si9000. We demonstrate impedance sensitivity analysis and reveal the real limitations of optimizing reference plane proximity for improved signal shielding.

Blog
Understanding Systems Engineering

Read our brand-new article where we explore the key areas of an engineering project and the different stages of electronic product development from a project execution perspective. From initiation and planning to design, development, validation, testing, and certification, we walk you through each phase to help you understand how successful electronic products are brought to life.

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How-To's
Do PCB Thermal Vias Actually Work?

Are thermal vias really helping your PCB’s heat management? Tech Consultant Zach Peterson dives into simulation data, research, and a controversial article to uncover the truth. Learn why via count and spacing matter more than sheer quantity.

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Blog
RF Power Amplifier Module PCB Design

RF power amplifiers can be found in many wireless products, often integrated into chipsets or modems. However, in certain specialized systems, you might require higher power output at a specific frequency. This necessitates a discrete amplifier circuit to deliver that power. In this article, we present an example project for a power amplifier that you can incorporate into your RF project.

Blog
Avoid GIGO in Your PCB Simulation Tools

Simulation tools are extremely useful for understanding electromagnetic behavior in a design. Learn more about how to avoid obtaining inaccurate results during your PCB simulation process.

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.

Tag
Embedded thumbnail for How to Reuse Board Shapes in MCAD
Working with MCAD CoDesigner extension
How to Reuse Board Shapes in MCAD

You can use the MCAD Co-designer panel to reuse your board shape or geometry in your PCB. We’ll show you how to use the MCAD Co-designer panel in Altium Designer and how to copy your board shape and geometry from your MCAD tool to Altium Designer.

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How to work with Selection
Selection filter - Panel Properties and PCB

Learn how to configure the types of selected objects using the Selection Filter. In addition, you will learn about the Post Selection Filter and its features.

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Working with MCAD CoDesigner extension
PCB Origins During the ECAD MCAD Exchange

Origins can vary from your MCAD tool and Altium Designer. With the MCAD Co-Designer panel Altium Designer can keep track of your origin point and make sure your design changes are exchanged correctly.

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How to work with Selection
Global Editing Using Find Similar Objects

Editing multiple objects one by one can be a very time consuming process. Altium Designer makes this easy and efficient with the Find Similar Objects tool, which allows you to globally select and edit multiple objects at once.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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