Weekly Digest: Documentation, Datasheets and Reliability In this article, we’re rounding up and collecting everything we’ve published this week for your weekend reading. Articles from PCB Design Experts For people who like to read there’s never a shortage of informative articles on the PCB Design Blog. Click to read new articles and while you’re there please leave a comment with questions or feedback. How to 'GIT' Collaborative with Altium - by Ari Mahpour PCIe BGA Fanouts and Escape Routing - by Zach Read Article DFSI: Stripline Differential Impedance Calculation Made Easy As a PCB designer, you may hear your signal integrity overlords dictate controlled impedance with a specific value and tolerance. As someone who has requested these things, I know designers have trouble with implementing this in their trace geometry. This article details what impedance is, how it is calculated, and a practical way for PCB designers to determine the proper geometry for their application. When designing high-speed serial circuits Read Article Why PCB Prototyping in the U.S. is a Crucial Element For Success Within today’s global design and manufacturing environment, moving PCB manufacturing offshore is our industry’s de facto product development process. Many believe that PCB prototyping could and should be moved offshore to take advantage of the rising skill and capability levels of the offshore resources in Taiwan, China and Korea. This has led to a crisis in the U.S. PCB prototyping industry. U.S.-based companies find it difficult to stay in Read Article How to "Git" Collaborative with Altium Designer Getting collaboration right with any ECAD tool can be rather challenging. For most of us we tend to stick with the “old school” methods: Work on your design Send a zip package via email to another Other works on the design and sends a zip package back to you for review You work on your design and send back to the other Repeat forever This method not only clutters up your inbox but it also forces you to work in a serial fashion. The solution to Read Article Datasheet Reliability with Ben Jordan In this OnTrack episode Judy Warner and Ben Jordan discuss about Datasheet Reliability. Can you trust them? And what does “Gilded” mean? This & more about verifying app notes. Watch the full episode. Read Article PCIe Card Guides: BGA Fanouts and Escape Routing With all the chips that appear on a PCI or PCIe card, laying out and routing these boards might seem extremely complicated. However, the standardized architecture of PCIe provides considerable flexibility for designers. One issue that is a bit complicated is PCIe BGA fanouts for components on these cards. The trick to implementing a fanout and escape routing strategy is ensuring that you comply with the PCIe layout and routing specifications Read Article Series Termination Resistor Calculation With transmission lines, some things never seem to be simple. Determining the termination technique and the values of components in a termination network shouldn’t be a difficult task. Most PCB design programs force you to look online for calculators, or you’ll have to run the calculations by hand. Instead, your design software should make it easy to test a range of component values in your termination network. Some components, traces Read Article Standard PCB Thickness and Your Layer Stack I’ll confess that I love 1990’s sitcoms. If Jerry Seinfeld were a PCB designer, he would probably ask “what’s the deal with the 1.57 mm board thickness?” It’s a fair question after all, and it makes you wonder why some standard values (e.g., 50 Ohms impedance in RF systems) are used in PCB design and other areas of engineering. There are good reasons why these and other design values have become in standardized in PCB design, even if they aren't Read Article The Essential Tools You Need for PCB Design Whether you’re building a house or building a PCB, you need the right tools in your toolbox. Every designer needs to have CAD tools for component placement, but even command line-based CAD software can be used for accurate component placement. With modern electronic devices becoming more complex at all levels, designers need tools that help expedite essential design tasks. Choosing the right set of PCB design tools requires weighing a number of Read Article LVDS PCB Layout Guidelines for Ensuring Signal Integrity When you first get started in high-speed PCB design, you'll spend a lot of time encountering and understanding an alphabet soup of acronyms. MIPI, USB, PCIe interface, SATA PCB layout... the list of acronyms used to name high-speed digital interfaces is long. Low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) is an older interface that was standardized for differential data transfer at high speeds, but it remains in use today for a variety of imaging and Read Article Routing Topology Configuration in PCB Design for Power, Data, and Peripherals Which PCB routing topology matches with which technologies? Take a look at this article to learn more. Read Article Weekly Digest: Projects and Teams We’re doing our best to provide the most in-depth information to help designers with productivity, project management and everything PCB design related. Get the latest information here from Industry Experts and catch up on everything published this week, all in one place. Let us know your burning questions or tag us in social media to share one of your projects! Octopart On The OnTrack Podcast with Judy Warner This week Chris Calvi came on the Read Article 5 Ways to Customize Altium Designer for Better Efficiency The Altium Designer® environment is designed to be very intuitive, but even slight customization of the interface can greatly enhance the efficiency of your PCB design workflow. Once you have been using Altium Designer or a while, you'll find the toolbar menu structure to be very intuitive. However, you may realize even more productivity gains with customization of the user interface. Customization is centric to each editor whether it's the Read Article It's a Converging, Electromechanical and Software World Software is eating the world. It’s making its way into traditional, mechanical products, thus forcing companies to rethink their design process. Products that have traditionally been mechanical are becoming jam-packed with software. This expansion of smart, connected products means new demands for engineers, and branching out into new fields. There is a need for a broader set of design skills among engineering staff and a need for more efficient Read Article 21:37 Output Job Files for Rapid, Repeatable PCB Manufacturing Data Generation Watch Video Sourcing Components with Christopher Calvi In today's episode Judy Warner is with Cristopher Calvi, Head and GM of Octopart to discuss about the current challenges and strategies in sourcing components. Watch the full episode here. Read Article Weekly Digest: Optimize Your Documentation and Workflow Get the latest information from Industry Experts, Altium webinars, videos and more to help you maximize your productivity. We know it takes a lot to go from design to assembly and fabrication so we’re working on providing the most in-depth information to help designers with the most challenging questions. Let us know what questions keep you up at night or consider joining our expert team of writers. New Articles on the PCB Design Blog Check out Read Article Pagination First page « First Previous page ‹‹ Page110 Current page111 Page112 Page113 Page114 Page115 Next page ›› Last page Last » Load More
