PCB Design Resources and Information | Altium

Explore content from blog posts to technical white papers gathered together for your convenience. All written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

Best Practices for Using Reference Designs Reference designs can help you get started building a new system, but watch out for these pitfalls if you plan to use reference designs for your PCB. Read Article

Best Practices for Sharing PCB Files vs. Sharing PCB Projects When is it best to share files vs. sharing projects for your PCB design? Altium 365 gives you both options in your web browser or within Altium Designer. Read Article

Anatomy of Latitude Part Two: "Thread with a Needle” in the context of energy We continue to explore the magic of energy conversion in a PWM transducer. Why is it magic? Theoretically, as we saw in the previous section, the line stabilizer initially converts some of the useful power into heat, which makes the efficiency of the line stabilizer less than 100%, and it is expected for technical systems. Theoretically, in a PWM transducer this happens without losses, isn't that magic? A PWM transducer, like a tailor with Read Article

Anatomy of Latitude Part One: Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) as a Result of the Evolution of Linear Systems Great Ideas and Smart Solutions There are different techniques in the world of technology to achieve various goals, both final and intermediate. Some techniques are so successful that they are commonly used with high efficiency. Electronics is no exception. Great ideas and ingenious solutions are found and applied in this area probably more than in other engineering fields. The greatest example is the use of Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) signals Read Article

Power Supply Design in Altium Designer Whether you’re designing a bench power supply for an electronics lab, or you need to design an embedded power supply for an IoT product, you’ll need some world-class PCB design tools. Altium is here to help you floorplan your power supply and create a set of detailed schematics with powerful circuit design and simulation features. With the schematic design features in Altium Designer, you can create and simulate your new power supply design. You Read Article

Estimating and Understanding Thermal Conductivity of PCBs Your circuit board substrate and copper conductors are the primary factors that determine how heat will move around the board. Your components will generate heat during operation, illustrating the importance of estimating thermal conductivity of a PCB. The thermal properties of your circuit board substrate are one factor that determine temperature rise in your components (particularly junction temperature) and heat flux away from critical Read Article

Overview of Passive and Active Heat Dissipation Techniques As your printed circuit board operates, power dissipation in active components causes the junction temperature to increase, and heat begins flowing from your components into your conductors and your substrate. PCB substrate materials tend to have low thermal conductivity, causing thermal problems like hot spots and high temperature in your PCB. Keeping the temperature of your components below their rated maximum requires thermal dissipation Read Article

Thermal Simulation and Analysis Software for Printed Circuit Design Thermal management in your printed circuit board is all about directing heat from hot to cool areas, ultimately reducing the temperature and producing a more even temperature distribution in your printed circuit board. Your arrangement of components and other thermal design decisions can be evaluated with thermal analysis software. This helps you identify areas of your circuit board that will operate at high temperatures and determine the Read Article

A Review of PCB Thermal Resistance Management with Thermal Vias Design of PCBs and thermal management are intimately linked as thermal problems are known to significantly reduce the useful lifetime of a circuit board and components. Heat that is generated in a circuit board by active and passive components tends to be confined near the components, leading to a high-temperature increase due to the low thermal conductivity of most circuit board substrates. Frequent cycling of a circuit board and components Read Article

PCB Thermal Resistance: Theory and Management The thermal conductivity of your PCB material stackup and arrangement of copper conductors are important factors that determine the thermal performance of your circuit board. You will likely need to include strategically placed thermal vias, a heat sink on each active component and power electronics, and active cooling measures near any other heat source on your circuit board. Copper in printed circuits has high thermal conductivity, while FR4 Read Article

Thermal Conductivity and Thermal Management for Printed Circuit Boards The physical properties of your PCB substrates and copper conductors are the primary factors that determine how it will perform under pressure. Thermal properties, rigidity, dispersion, relative permittivity, and more will affect signal integrity, thermal management, and mechanical performance of your circuit board. When it comes to thermal conductivity, choosing the right substrate can help you combat temperature rise in your board with Read Article

Managing Your Circuit Board Parts in Altium Designer There’s a multitude of component manufacturers, and each produces a huge number of components. No one can keep track of all information for every circuit board part. PCB components contain more information than just electrical specifications. Your PCB components also contain pin layouts, schematic symbols, SPICE model information, and even 3D models. Today’s PCB design teams need solutions to help them keep their circuit board parts and libraries Read Article

Design with Radio Frequency Interference Analysis in Mind with Altium Radio frequency interference analysis is one important task in high frequency and high-speed PCB design. Interference at radio frequencies can arise due to many simple design errors, but these problems can be easy to spot with the right PCB design tools. When you need to identify areas of a design that can create RFI problems, an automated rules-driven toolset can help. If you’re unclear on what RFI is or how you can spot areas in a design that Read Article

Power Integrity Analysis in Your PCB Design Software Power integrity problems can abound in modern PCBs, especially high-speed boards that run with fast edge rates. These systems require precise design of the PDN impedance to ensure stable power is always delivered throughout the system. Without carefully considering the PDN characteristic impedance, you’re at risk of creating ripple and noise in the power distribution network when fast signals switch states. Some designers might wonder what is Read Article

How to Ensure PCB Impedance Control During Routing High-speed signals and high-frequency signals both have one thing in common: the need for impedance-controlled routing on low loss, low dispersion interconnects. PCB impedance control can be difficult to achieve without the right set of routing tools and an integrated impedance calculator in your design tools. Most impedance calculators use a basic equation that does not accurately represent real traces on PCB substrates and does not correctly Read Article

How to Use Your CAD Tools for RF Trace Taper Design PCB traces in RF systems must be designed to have specific impedance, which is normally 50 Ohms in order to limit reflection when interfacing with other RF components like antennas. Waveguide routing is often used and requires controlled impedance, but not all components can support wide traces used in RF waveguide routing. To provide the required interface with components, the end of an RF waveguide, including coplanar waveguide routing, can be Read Article

How to Design and Route Your RF Filter PCB Layout RF PCBs and mixed-signal systems are challenging for many designers. Careful attention must be paid to the PCB stackup design, process for designing transmission lines, placement of components, and floorplanning the PCB layout to ensure predictable return path. Many RF PCB layout designs will include printed elements, like an RF filter, antenna, isolation structures, and unique waveguide geometries. RF systems can make copious use of RF filters Read Article