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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The 94 V-0 Circuit Board Rating There are a lot of elements to consider when you are designing a PCB. One consideration is making sure your PCB meets approved UL flammability ratings. If you need to design a PCB with a 94 V-0 rating, which means the specimen cannot burn for more than 10 seconds. When working with circuits, you have to choose the right materials to make sure your PCB indeed receives a 94 V-0 rating. Altium Designer has all the tools and resources you need to Read Article

DIY Model Rocket Have you always designed your DIY model rocket printed circuit boards, one board, at a time because a multi-board system-level design was beyond what CAD systems could do? As technology evolves, the ability to design multiple boards within a project provides significant advantages over single board design. The best way to do this is with Altium Designer 18, the most widely-used PCB design solution known for excellence in Native 3D PCB Computer Read Article

Homegrown PCB Professionals, BOM Management and Subject Matter Expertise - September 2018

Homegrown PCB Professionals, BOM Management Software, and Subject Matter Expertise - September 2018 OnTrack Newsletter September 2018 VOL. 2 No 6 ARE ENGINEERS AND PCB TECHNOLOGISTS HOMEGROWN? Highlighting Multi-Generational Technologists Over the past year, I’ve noticed a subtle trend in the designers and technologists we’ve interviewed for this newsletter. Have you noticed it? There have been a number of times people cited their parents as the ones who inspired them to pursue an electronics career. (Think...Rick Hartley, Nicole Creeden, Bill Read Article

AltiumLive 2018 Panel Discussion with Experts from PCB Supply Chain Didn't get to attend AltiumLive this year? Check out the Panel Discussion from industry experts across the Printed Circuit Board supply chain. Watch or Listen to AltiumLive 2018 Panel Discussion now. Read Article

42:35 Panel Discussion- PCB Design and Realization- Breaking the Chains of Isolation Watch Video

1:10:57 The Commodore Experience and Engineering the Early Generations of Home Computers with Bil Herd Watch the video above to get an inside look on what it was like in the early days of home Watch Video

41:52 Announcing Altium Designer 19 See the Altium Designer Demo here: Watch Video

Industry Keynote: The Extreme Importance of PC Board Stack-up with Rick Hartley Want to see the presentation slides up close or download a copy for yourself? Get the The Extreme Importance of Watch Video

Industry Keynote: How to Leverage System-Level Design Thinking with Jeremy Blum Want to see the presentation slides up close or download a copy for yourself? Get the the How to Leverage Watch Video

Introducing Altium 365: The Connected Future of PCB Design Want to see the presentation slides up close or download a copy for yourself? Get the The Connected Future of Watch Video

Industry Keynote: The Value of the White Space with Eric Bogatin Want to see the presentation slides up close or download a copy for yourself? Get the The Value of the Watch Video

Choosing Replacement Components With an Integrated Library

Find Replacement Electronic Components With an Integrated Library Much as we would like, designing a new product or system is not without its hiccups. Designs, functionality, and component changes may be made at the last minute, forcing design modification or component replacement. Replacement circuit components or replacement can require thorough knowledge of your circuit boards. Repairing a circuit board is often more than finding a circuit breaking. Electrical equipment and service panel tinkering can go so Read Article

Connectors, Tooling Holes, and Fiducial Markers for Component Placement and Orientation When you’re a new systems designer, manufacturability of your designs is probably the last thing you think about. When I was younger and worked on a new electro-optics system, I was dismayed to learn that a system I designed needed a complete redesign. In its current state, the thing was unlikely to ever make it off the manufacturing line. PCBs should also be designed such that manufacturing is streamlined. Orientation, landing type, and holes Read Article

Integrated Design Software vs. Access Databases For Bills of Materials

PCB Manufacturing: Access Databases vs. Integrated Design Software For Bills of Materials Building databases in programs like Access is easy enough. Access databases deserve a lot of credit for helping organize tons of information in one place. But adapting these programs to electronics design can be a real challenge. Any PCB that is intended for manufacturing must have a corresponding bill of materials. This document is critical as it lists all of information about your PCB in a standardized format. Your bill of materials contains a Read Article

Why Constantly Updating Component Libraries are Boons If you’re my age or older, you might remember looking through the card catalog at your local library. Lacking any digitized system, thumbing through a list of information on paper was the only way to find the book you were looking for. This might be fine for finding books in a hurry, but it is a terrible system for locating the components you need for your PCB. Within the potential production environments, PCB layout is only one piece of an ever Read Article

HDI PCB Designs and the CAD Tools Behind Them Although it is said that the only guarantees in life are death and taxes, I would submit that the third guarantee in life is that electronic devices will continue to get smaller and smaller. I’m pretty sure that no one wants their cell phone to grow back to the size of a brick again, so to continue this path of ever decreasing sized electronics means that circuit boards need to shrink in size as well. The best way to do this is to use high Read Article

Don’t Let Your Unrouted Nets be Traces to Nowhere Have you ever seen one of those movies where a train is barreling down the track and starts to cross a bridge only to realize further down the line that the tracks run out and the bridge goes nowhere? That is a scary situation and only an alert train driver, formerly known as a train engineer, can prevent a catastrophe. Although, not as catastrophic, having unrouted nets on your board can wreak havoc to your PCB’s operation. Unrouted nets are Read Article