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.

Creepage and Clearance Design Rules Require More Than Integrated Flow Occasionally, I get to drive through the Pacific Northwest on a clear day. Unencumbered by rain clouds, the mountain ranges are visible. So visible that I feel I could reach out and touch them. If I could fly the line of sight, I could be at the top of any mountain quickly. Since I can’t fly, driving my car along a twisting mountain highway would get me there on a longer route. So it is with PCB creepage and clearance design rules on a printed Read Article

Upverter and The Future of Browser-Based PCB Design Overview: Making and checking is the most frustrating aspect of PCB design. Find out how Zak Homuth set out to change that and what is next for EE and the future of PCB design in a browser-based setting. Listen to the Podcast: Download this episode (right click and save) Watch the video: Show Highlights: Why the ? Verified at scale, in a high-quality way. Verified - free to use for everybody coming soon! Verifying Datasheets, it’s a lot of work Read Article

Propagation Delay, Transmission Delay, and Analog Signal Resonance in Your PCB Legend has it that opera singers can break champagne flutes just by wailing at the right note. From opera singers to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and the high tide in the Bay of Fundy in Canada, resonance can be a beautiful and simultaneously destructive phenomenon. The terms “transmission delay” and “propagation delay” are sometimes used interchangeably. In analog systems, both terms can refer to the time required for a signal to travel between Read Article

PCB Noise Reduction with Linear Devices in Electronics When I first got into electronics and PCB design as a student, I had the idea that noise suppression required a lot of elaborate (and expensive) equipment. I had visions in my mind of building complicated mainframe-style systems for the sole purpose of coaxing the perfect signal from a device. Sure, you can go that route if you like. But like many aspects of engineering, the best solution is often the simplest. Most PCB designers are considering Read Article

Explain Like I’m a Designer: ELIC PCB and HDI Multilayer Designing After I finished moving into my new (and somewhat smaller) apartment, I was left with a stack of boxes that looked quite out of place in the corner of my living room. Packing all my extra boxes in my small storage closet was like playing a game of Tetris. As PCBs continue to get smaller, you may be playing that same game of Tetris with your components. This means you will need routing techniques that can accommodate high-component and Read Article

Where to Start in Courses for PCB Design or Skills I Wish I’d Learned in College I’m no longer embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t exactly a model student in college. When I was pursuing my engineering degree, Warcraft and FIFA occupied more of my time than pouring over “boring” electronics notes. I came close to failing some classes but paid attention to important topics involving electronics design and microcontrollers. Nevertheless, nothing prepared me for the real world of PCB design, like my first job as an electronics Read Article

Electronic Product Life Cycle Management Avoids Unpredicted Application Results Everyone has a smartphone these days. Well, everyone except my grandparents. They still use clamshell phones and perfectly happy with them. The rest of us have moved on to leaner and meaner communication devices. Eventually, the product life cycle for clamshell phones will end and they will be relegated to the history books. A look back through the history of technology reveals that no piece of technology can thrive forever. Project life cycle Read Article

Managing Your Audio Power Supply Designs: Tips for Circuit Design As I get older, I suspect I’m gradually getting deafer. My hearing was pretty sharp during my teenage years but these days, I miss out on conversations and need to frequently ask people to repeat themselves. Perhaps my hearing ability is deteriorating due to age; however, when I hear static noise creeping out of an amplifier, I know to trust my ears. In electronics, the power supply of audio circuits can mean the difference between perfect audio Read Article

Changing Board Sizes in Altium Designer It seems like there are as many different circuit board shapes and sizes as there are stars in the sky. If you have been working for a company that only makes boards according to a few standard form factors, then you may not know just how diverse all of the different sizes and shapes can be. Round boards, square boards, boards with notches and cutouts in them, boards with odd angle corners, and boards with multiple corners and contours. A list of Read Article

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Choosing the Right RFID Card Technology For Your Embedded System As a pure introvert who fears small talk, I absolutely dread networking events. Besides maintaining endless empty chatter with strangers, picking out the best attire is challenging, especially considering my dreadful fashion sense. Thankfully, I’m much better at choosing the right type of Radio Frequency Identification or RFID card technology for my embedded system projects. What is an RFID Card? In the simplest sense, an RFID card is a token Read Article

Creating PCB Multiple Part Components and Symbols in Altium Designer When you are designing electronic circuitry for printed circuit boards, creating symbols in your CAD system is part of the job. For the most part, you will be pulling symbols from different libraries, but every now and then you are going to have to build one yourself. Creating symbols in Altium Designer^® is a straightforward operation - you can build a symbol manually or use an advanced symbol generator to do the heavy lifting of symbol creation Read Article

Old Software Doesn’t Need a Leash for New Supplier Parts Updating Keeping track of component updates is a big job, what with change announcements coming in from vendors and distributors in random announcements and emails throughout the year. Keeping track of random notices and having a good process for implementing them is also difficult. Using schematic and PCB editors, along with local and global libraries in an organized manner helps keep component information organized and available. Use of component Read Article

Introduction To PDN Analyzer Webinar Recap May 10, 2018 If you joined us for the May 10th, 2018, PDN Analyzer^™ webinar then the following will be a recap, if not here’s what you missed. You can also view the presentation slides and recording. Key Takeaways about PDN Power Delivery Network () Design Issues Low supply voltage at load components. A low supply voltage at your loads can cause issues like processors outputting faulty logic. These things happen when there is an unexpected voltage drop Read Article

What’s New in Altium Designer 18 Webinar Recap April 19, 2018 April 19th 2018. A beautiful thursday morning and a great day for an Altium Designer webinar. I gather my things and go to the recording studio... In case you missed our Altium Designer 18 live webinar, no worries. You can catch up here with the video recording and presentation slides. If you’re not a fan of videos I’ll try my best to summarize in the webinar notes bellow. Key Takeaways Performance Improvements Multi-threading Multithreading Read Article

True ECAD / MCAD Co-Design Will Eliminate PCB Design Placement Errors Have you ever had a PCB design returned to you because a component that you placed conflicted with a mechanical feature? Missing even one conflict can cause a lot of grief when it comes time to install the circuit board into the final system. It certainly did in my case where that one part ended up in a location that ultimately wouldn’t fit in the device housing. The only way my layout would work was if I cut an opening in the enclosure for a Read Article

David Carmody’s DFM Report Integrating Design and Assembly Do you know your fabricator? Meet David Carmody, Division Manager and CID+ at San Diego PCB Design. As a service bureau, San Diego PCB works on a variety of PCB design projects. Learn why David says, “You gotta know who you’re fabbing with” and how he is using DFM Reports to help customers integrate design and assembly in this episode of The OnTrack Podcast. Listen to the Podcast: Download this episode (right click and save) Watch the video: Show Read Article