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

PCB Routing Guidelines for DDR4 Memory Devices Follow these DDR4 routing and PCB layout guidelines to ensure signal integrity and correct timing for high speed DDR buses. Read Article
The Role of Embedded Capacitors in PCB Design Mention capacitance, conductors, and dielectric capacitors to a 7th-grade science class, and you may see glazed-over expressions and hear bored sighs. I mean, hey, sometimes I get this with adults and coworkers I’m talking to so I can’t say I’m unsympathetic to the kids, but I have to promise them that circuits and circuit boards are, truly, fascinating. To help students visualize how capacitors work, construct a simple capacitor from two sheets Read Article
Commodore 128 Principal Engineer, Bil Herd on Best Practices for Learning a New CAD Tool Bil Herd shares stories and design wisdom from years of experience as a hardware engineer, most famously at Commodore. He started out self-taught, then Bil accidentally started working around people even more brilliant than him and some of it rubbed off a little. Learn about his interesting journey from TV repair to Commodore, Hackaday and beyond. Today, Bil is self-employed and focused on networks, high-level architecture consulting and hardware Read Article
Avoid the First Pass Perils in Prototyping Runs for Your Electronics Anything worth doing is difficult, and hardware is no different. My first PCB for a hardware product crashed and burned several times before I got it to work as designed. Even after all of this work, we never moved beyond building functional prototypes. After your design and initial testing phases are completed, it is time to order your first manufacturing run. Improper testing and design means your first manufacturing run will be fraught with Read Article
Via Aspect Ratio: Design, Signal Integrity, and Manufacturability There is a certain beauty that exists in nature and can only be mimicked in PCB design. The golden ratio found in nature is a good example of a universal relationship that defines the aspect ratio of plants and animals. As with anything, PCBs can have layers to them: conductive layering, dielectric layers, barrier layers and with layers come drilling. And while via aspect ratios are no golden ratio, they have a beauty all their own and are Read Article
Annular Rings for PCB and Nonfunctional Pads: Should You Use ‘em or Lose ‘em? It’s spring cleaning time at my house. I have so much old stuff in my garage, and I can never decide what to get rid of and what to keep. The stuff I keep always has some kind of sentimental value, or it’s something that I think I’ll need later. Dusty old circuits and boards that I’ve kept around, an old computer I haven’t gotten around to cleaning off that I made some of my first CAD designs on - the life of a hoarding engineer. Annular rings in Read Article
Design Planning with Differential Pair Routing Software and Directive Symbols If the components on your PCB are like the organs in your body, then your trace routing between components are like blood vessels. What looks like a complex tangle of copper connections is actually a meticulously designed system that uses well-understood design rules. Your PCB design software can help you maximize your productivity while routing and prevent errors using directive designations. Great PCB design software doesn’t just let you set Read Article
CAD Layout Software for Modern PCB Design and Modern PCB Designers Back in the day, PCB designers drew schematics by hand. Instead of guiding a mouse, technicians used red and blue pencils to carefully draw pads and traces on vellum parchment paper. Their tools included a triangle, a T-square, and templates. Forget a thorough design process involving CAD tools, full team collaboration, differentiated schematic diagrams and circuit board designs - one was lucky enough to have a steady hand. After completing a Read Article
Auto-Interactive Routing to Overcome Obstacles and Other Polygons There’s no doubt about it, routing traces on a printed circuit board by hand can be a lot of fun. It’s an engaging challenge to make the routing as neat, tight, and correct as possible to give you the shortest routes with the best signal integrity. Once you are done you can take a lot of pride in knowing that your measured lines are perfect, you differential pairs are spot on, and everything looks great. The only problem is that level of manual Read Article
Dispel Confusion with Global Editing: Poor DxDesigner Usability Causes Confusion The world has turned the corner from linear to organic. The need for global editing within versatile environments continues to grow. It used to be I could keep one file in my office drawer to collect bills for the month. When I got paid, it was a simple matter to list the bills, add them up, and write the checks. These days, bill paying goes much quicker on the computer. But I’ve had to adapt to different steps on each utility website and Read Article
Analog Meets Digital: How Converters Can Make or Break Signal Performance We are born into a world of purely analog signals. The sound of a stream running through a mountain meadow, the brown color of dirt, that screaming baby next to you; all of these ‘signals’ are of an analog nature. Yet, we grow up and seem to spend most of our time attempting to turn these signals into a reproducible ‘digital’ copy so we can perceive them through a digital device. Analog and digital signal performance is necessary to keep in mind Read Article
The Advantages of Using Project Templates for PCB Design The domestication of horses, inventing the wheel and developing the combustion engine are tremendous milestones that we laud for enabling us to get around more efficiently and explore new places. Although, this is true another creation that deserves at least as much credit for giving most of us the confidence to branch out from our familiar surroundings is the map. The knowledge that someone before us has traversed a path gives us confidence in Read Article
PCB Design Testing The most successful PCB designs a result from practice, but for your PCB to function as intended, you also need to test your design. By testing the electronic components of your board before manufacturing you can be sure that it will perform as you intended with your design. Schematic simulation does not guarantee the functionality, reliability or even manufacturability of your design. Applying good design for manufacturing (DFM) practices will Download PDF
Competitive Exoskeleton by Project March from the Delft Technical University Dream Team Judy Warner: Robbert, please tell us about your major at Delft Technical University and your role at Project March. Robbert de Lange: I’m studying civil engineering and my role on the Project March team is Acquisition and PR. Presently, I have taken off a full year of studies to focus full-time on Project March. Warner: What motivated you to take a full year off of your studies to invest in Project March? De Lange: Beyond all the academic Read Article
Mary Elizabeth McCulloch Developed Voz Box and Project Vive Judy Warner: It’s so nice to talk with you, Mary Elizabeth! Please share your background, education and what inspired you to choose engineering as a vocation. Mary Elizabeth McCulloch: I was always good at science and math and I graduated from Penn State University with a biomedical degree in 2016. Both of my parents were very inspirational in my choice to pursue engineering. My Dad studied physics in college and is now an engineer who Read Article
Flex and Material Sets with Chris Hunrath The rise in flex applications across all industries from medical to automotive, aerospace and military uses means more opportunity for material suppliers to innovate and meet demand. Here what industry expert Chris Hunrath has to share, from general guidelines for designing circuits unique for flex and materials that can be autoclaved over and over. Listen in to this week’s OnTrack expert to learn about flex and material sets. Listen to the Read Article
PCB Component Data Management Resolved with Connected Component Applications My mouth was watering as I picked up the box sitting on my front porch. Dinner would be ready in 20 minutes. I was so hungry, having just gotten home. The box contained recipe cards and ingredients for making dinners throughout the week. I put on my slippers, and I pulled a recipe card from the box. All the ingredients were there. This new meal delivery service was growing on me. I’d be eating dinner soon, with time to spare for needed downtime Read Article