Hello, Welcome to the Altium Learning Hub

Checklists are an important part of life. Airline pilots use them to make sure that they’ve put the wheels down before landing. Shoppers use them to make sure that they don’t forget to buy the eggs. We all use checklists in different ways, and many of us would be lost without them. Here’s another good use for a checklist; making sure that we don’t forget to include important elements on our PCB design. It’s not likely that we will forget to...

My wife works at an elementary school, and the thing she dislikes the most is when she has to put herself between two kids in an argument. Being caught in the middle like that is frustrating for her because it is often difficult to turn it into a “win” for both sides of the argument. We as PCB designers are often in the same position when we have to mediate the needs of electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Trying to negotiate a...

            On Track Newsletter October 2017 VOL. 1 No 7   Welcome to the October 2017 issue of Altium’s On Track Newsletter. This month we celebrate a few unique engineers and designers from our global user community. The...

Before making a decision on buying a home, you would probably ask a lot of questions. Is it close to the facilities and services that are important to you? Is it in a good and safe neighborhood? Will the layout of the house satisfy your needs? These are all important questions that need to be answered before you commit to living there. In the same way, buying new PCB design software deserves the same level of scrutiny. You will want to find...

In this episode, Chris Carlson gives an overview of thermal management as it relates to PCB design. An expert in PCB design, Chris is a wealth of information for the novice and experts in PCB design. Get the most effective information on PCB design and Electronic Design Automation. If you find this video interesting, please like and share with your fellow PCB designers or let us know if you have any questions in the comments. Let us know if you...

  As you dive into your evaluation of Altium Designer, I wanted to share with you some information specifically for someone like you that is coming from a PADS background.   When we look at what engineers and designers really do every day, we often see that as much as 61% of your day can be consumed with non-design related tasks.   These tasks are a byproduct of using a collection of tools (toolchains), vs. the Altium Designer paradigm of...

I once had the privilege of touring the USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) courtesy of a family member who served aboard her. Although secure areas were off-limits to me, I still was able to see a good portion of the ship. I saw everything from hangars and workshops to crew quarters and the galley. I even stood on the foremost part of the flight deck, right where Optimus Prime stood at the end of the second Transformers movie. Through it all, I was...

Whenever you place your board into an enclosure, it will need to mount to that enclosure somehow. In order to provide a secure mount without damaging the surface of the PCB with a screw, it's typical to simply place plated through holes in the corners. These PCB mounting holes generally have the pad exposed beneath solder mask so that, if needed, the mounting point can be connected electrically back to one of your nets. One question that often...