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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E-Book: Navigating PCB Manufacturing: Part 1 Every designer should take time to understand the PCB manufacturing process. This e-book will guide designers through important concepts in PCB fabrication, assembly, and DFM. Download PDF

How To: Impedance Matching and Terminating Capacitive Loads Impedance matching and capacitive load termination are examined in this article. Read Article

AltiumLive 2022: Learn, Connect, and Get Inspired Lawrence Romine drops important announcements for the upcoming AltiumLive 2022 Virtual Summit. Watch or listen on the go now. Read Article

How Altium Designer can help you avoid stock, cost, and lifecycle surprises Designing is stressful enough unfortunately we now also have to worry about components constantly being out of stock or obsolete Watch Video

Improving Supply Chain Success with BOM Management

What Is BOM Management? Improving Supply Chain Success It’s no secret that component shortages have become more frequent this year. In fact, countries around the world are losing billions in revenue due to supply issues. According to EPSNews, “In 2021, there’s such a severe shortage of semiconductors that the automotive industry is set to lose more than $100 billion in sales because it can’t get chips.” Having the right components on hand is more crucial than ever as availability, obsolescence Read Article

How to Design a Custom Arduino Shield Board Custom Arduino shields are easy to design with the right PCB layout tools. If you’re a hobbyist or student, take a look at our guide on custom Arduino shields. Read Article

Using Altium 365 Over Your Vanilla Version Control System A review on the highlights of Altium 365 and why you would choose it over your vanilla version control system. Read Article

Why Use a Version Control System in PCB Design

Why Version Control Systems for PCB Designers are Useful A review on what a version control system is, what it does, and why you should be using it for your Altium projects. Read Article

Meeting Standards: IPC 6012 Class 3 Via Sizes and Annular Rings Take a look at the above image of a PCB layout, specifically the vias and drill holes poking through the silkscreen. It's quite clear that some of these vias are off-center, meaning the drill hit that created these vias was not dead-center in the receiving land. This leaves behind an annular ring, something which might be considered a defect in certain IPC product classes. Under the IPC standards for rigid boards, we have several possible Read Article

When to Use Tented Vias in Your PCB Layout Some designers swear by tented vias and prefer to always use them. When should these be used and when should they be avoided? We’ll explore in this article. Read Article

Design Your Electronic Device with a Hacker State of Mind

Design Your Electronic Device with Hacking in Mind A very eye-opening world of hacking and understanding the never-ending risk to secure your electronic device. You wouldn’t want to miss this episode with a famous “good hacker” Joe grand. Watch now or listen on the go. Read Article

SAP (Semi-Additive PCB Process) – How Creative Can You Be? Challenge how creative you can be! Can SAP processes produce plated through vias? Read this article to find out! Read Article

Can You Design a Rotation-Proof Connector Pinout? There are times where your connector pinout needs to be adaptable and reversible. What’s the easiest way to do this? Use a rotation-proof connector in your PCB. Read Article

PCB Design - Fun, Frustration and Misconception What do the top minds in the PCB Design social media space think about the modern landscape? We sat down with Hacksmith Industries, DD ElectroTech, and Electgpl to chat about how they got started, what frustrates them, what they think about A.I., and much more. Q1. Most Exciting PCB Design Ever & Its Biggest Challenge? Chris Thiele - Hacksmith Entertainment Ltd. So I think the most challenging design I've ever made was a Daft Punk helmet, Guy Read Article

How to Choose Board Plating and Thickness for Your PCB Ever wondered what surface plating you should use? We've compiled important data on PCB plating. Read Article

How the Gibbs Phenomenon Produces Measurement Artifacts The Gibbs phenomenon is a measurement artifact that can be mistaken for real signal integrity problems like ground bounce, ringing from reflections, or resonance on short lines. Read Article

HDI PCB design and HDI PCB manufacturing process

What's HDI? Design Basics and the HDI PCB Manufacturing Process Learn about design basics for HDI PCB board design. When planning for the HDI PCB manufacturing process, you can prepare accurate designs and deliverables with Altium Designer. Read Article