Hello, Welcome to the Altium Learning Hub

Altium Designer allows you to start designing right away and although the default settings are good enough for many to get the job done, it is beneficial to take a deeper dive into the project options and start to customize your design space. A customized design space means it’s tailor-made for how you design, allowing you to get your work done in a manner you fully understand.  Watch this video where we’ll cover how you can customize project...

Altium Designer allows you to start designing right away and although the default settings are good enough for many to get the job done, it is beneficial to take a deeper dive into the project options and start to customize your design space. A customized design space means it’s tailor-made for how you design, allowing you to get your work done in a manner you fully understand.  Watch this video where we’ll cover how you can customize project...

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. A stripline impedance calculator can help you determine the width that will be needed to hit a target impedance for a given...

Microstrips are one common routing style used in mid-range frequency applications like sub-1 GHz radios, as well as higher speed buses with signal-ended signals (e.g., DDR). If you need to find and use an efficient and accurate microstrip impedance calculator that provides lossless impedance values, you can use our free tool below. This microstrip impedance calculator gives you a good start for estimating the trace width and PCB dielectric...

The use of ferrites in a PDN is one design recommendation that is fraught with unclear guidance and over-generalized recommendations. If you see an application note or a reference design that recommends placing a ferrite in a PDN, should you follow this in your specific design, or should you ignore this and focus on adding capacitance? What if you’re using the ferrite to isolate two rails? These are two questions we want to answer in this...

During my recent talk at AltiumLive 2022 CONNECT, there was a very interesting question from the audience. Someone asked whether it’s possible to put a digital signal through a grounded coplanar waveguide. This is an interesting question that requires looking at the S-parameters of the waveguide, and that is what we’ll look at in this post. During the Q&A session, I referenced a paper in the literature that contains a set of simulated and...

A schematic says nothing about SI, PI, or EMI. It’s when you translate the ideal wires and white space of the schematic into the physical design of a layout that these problems come alive. And the only thing the physical interconnects in your circuit board is going to do is create noise and screw up your system performance. I will focus on the overlap of the three worlds of SI, PI, and EMI: those design features that are the trifecta, that...

EMC compliance usually hinges on having a good circuit board layout. Good circuit board layout is mostly a matter of recognizing potential problem areas and maintaining control of unwanted coupling paths. Approximately half of all products tested in commercial test labs comply with all electromagnetic compatibility requirements on the first pass.  Many companies consistently design their products to be compliant, while others routinely show up...

Carl Schattke and Julie Ellis present how designing with manufacturing make the entire team from concept to fabrication a winning one, live from the IPC APEX Expo in San Diego. Keynote Highlights: Interplay between the sides of design and manufacturing Insight into different teams involved in parts of the design process Overview of different leadership roles within teams  Importance of panel drawings and when they are necessary Laser...