PCB Design Resources and Information

Explore Altium's Resource hub to discover content from blog posts and design guides to technical white papers, all gathered together for your convenience and written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

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PWM in Power Supply Design Read and learn the benefits of using a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) when designing high power PCB. Read Article

What is Product Lifecycle Management? Read and learn the stages and benefits of a properly implemented Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system. Mark Harris shares his knowledge to streamline processes and maximize efficiencies during product development and production. Read Article

Why PCB Data Management Matters PCB consumer electronics data management is a complex undertaking that, when done correctly, can enhance design accuracy and reduce timescales. Read Article

Advantages of Using Draftsman to Create a PCB Assembly Drawing You don't need to use a mechanical drawing application to create your PCB assembly drawing. Instead, you can use Draftsman, an easy-to-use feature in Altium Designer. Download PDF

OnTrack Newsletter: Design WITH Manufacturing, Diff Pairs, Brain Food – October 2021 October 2021 VOL. 5 No. 4 Full Article | Watch Video | Brain Food Design to Manufacturing with a Single Mouse Click Imagine if you could design your circuit board, run simulations, source your parts, generate an accurate BOM, generate your output files and simply press a “send to manufacturing” button all within your design environment? While that may sound like a far-off dream, this interview with Misha Govshteyn from MacroFab will give you Read Article

What's New: Altium 365 November 2021 Updates Check out the latest development and new features on Altium 365. Open Beta features include Schematic Compare, Gerber Compare, MCAD CoDesigner Updates and more. Read now to learn more. Read Article

Getting Started With High Current Circuit Board Design High current PCB design brings its own set of challenges, both in terms of PCB layout and safety. Here’s what you need to know. Read Article

Common Mode Choke Selection Noise on power supply lines can be a major headache. We'll examine how to select a common-mode choke to help eliminate common-mode noise. Read Article

Mastering Magnetism: Hall Effect Sensors and Applications for PCBs Magnetism allows you to do some really cool things—especially when electrons move through a magnetic field. One device that uses the deflection of electron motion for sensing is a Hall effect sensor. These little devices are used in automotive, manufacturing, consumer electronics, and other industries. The Hall effect basically allows a magnetic field to be sensed, which offers several possible applications. Some of the possible applications Read Article

Controlled ESR Capacitors: Should You Use Them for Power Integrity? I can’t think of a single product I’ve built that doesn’t require capacitors. We often talk a lot about effective series inductance (ESL) in capacitors and its effects on power integrity. What about effective series resistance (ESR)? Is there a technique you can use to determine the appropriate level of resistance, and can you use ESR to your advantage? Like many answers to important engineering questions, the answer is “it depends.” One type of Read Article

Routing Requirements for USB 2.0 on a 2-Layer PCB In an earlier blog, I discussed some of the basic points in preparing routing rules for 2-layer PCBs to support routing and layout with digital signals. In particular, we looked at some of the basic stackup and routing rules needed to support a digital interface like I2C or SPI on a 2-layer PCB. When working with these interfaces, a few simple guidelines can help ensure signal integrity in your board and cut down on EMI. What about an impedance Read Article

Ferrite Core Selection and Design Decisions When designing a transformer or using a ferrite core inductor, you must use the correct design process, and there is no substitution for real-world final testing. Let’s look at the process. Read Article

Schematic Design Review Checklist This article is a simple, no-frills checklist to help you check schematics. Read now and avoid schematic design mistakes that could make their way into prototypes or production without a second thought. Read Article

Beginner's Guide to H-bridge Full Wave Rectifier Design Need to start a new power conversion design? You’ll probably need an H-bridge full-wave rectifier to produce a stable DC output. Read Article

Energy Harvesting Sensors for Medical Devices and Remote Sensors Harvesting energy from the environment is an increasingly popular technique for powering electrical devices. Let’s discuss sources and implementation. Read Article

How Important is your Microcontroller Clock Source The type of clock signal you need to use for your microcontroller will depend mainly on the nature of the device it’s embedded in and its operating environment. Read Article

MMw and RF Interaction John will generously share with us today a glimpse of his recent keynote presentation at PCB West 2021. Watch now, and don't miss this rare opportunity to learn from expert John Coonrod. Read Article