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.

Additive PCB Manufacturing: The Vaccine for Electronics Supply Shocks? At this time, at least a quarter of the world’s population is under quarantine, with workers unable to go to offices or factories, leading to fundamental disabling of the world economy. The electronics industry is suffering greatly as well, dealing with a supply shock from factories shutting down in Southeast Asia, to demand-side shocks from Western markets literally shutting down. Worst of all, the COVID-19 pandemic has created an enormous Read Article

The Role Of ISU Petasys, A Multilayer Manufacturing Company in Realizing a Successful PCB Implementation John Stephens, Senior Vice President of Sales for ISU Petasys (pronounced “E-soo”), built his first circuit board in 1974. Like many others of us in the industry, he got a first-hand education in PCB design, and manufacturing and assembly by working in the aerospace industry. He explains, “I started in aerospace at Litton Guidance and Control Systems, where I worked in a process development lab that was basically a prototyping shop where we Read Article

LTE + GNSS Asset Tracker Part 2 This is Part Two of my LTE GNSS Asset Tracker project. In part one, I identified the right components for the project and captured the schematics. In this part, we are going to finish the project up with the PCB layout and routing. In the last article, I had stated my goal of making this board as small as possible with the intention of making a high density board, expecting I’d need 6 layers for the routing. However, a board’s total size is Read Article

Take the Risk Out of Prototype PCB Assembly (PCBA) Take the risk out of your PCB assembly (PCBA) with supply chain management. There is a special feeling one gets when polishing off a Rev A design and ordering the first set of PCBs from a board house. While designers everywhere would likely not trade that feeling for anything, taking some of the uneasiness off the table would probably be a welcome change. Here are review steps that should prove more effective at settling nerves than an after-work Read Article

Figure of Merit: A Way to Score Your Opinions Metrics are data, and statistically backed measures. It is always expedient to base decisions on data and metrics. But what if a metric doesn’t exist? Then you can create the next best measure: the Figure of Merit. The problem with opinions is that they are difficult to defend, and when used in conjunction with producibility, they often they vary from person to person. That is why the Figure of Merit process is so popular. For a small amount of Read Article

Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing: An Introduction If you do a search for “Hardware-in-the-Loop” testing, you will frequently find examples of complex, real-time systems. This article from National Instruments, for example, gives a nice explanation and background on what hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) is, and provides an example of testing electronic control units within an automobile. In this article, we will be focusing on a smaller, more bite-sized version of HIL testing concepts. What is Hardware Read Article

Towards a Deeper Understanding with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute Discover how Altium Designer + Altium 365 are helping power groundbreaking research on climate change and fostering a deeper understanding of our ecosystem with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Read Article

COVID-19 Challenge My name is Piotr Lazarek. I’m a 19 year old engineer studying at Dulwich College in London. Because of the pandemic, I was forced to fly back to Poland for quarantine. To be frank, it wasn’t an easy time for me—after a week, I was practically dying of boredom. Thankfully, around that time, I received an invitation for a project called “COVID-19 Challenge”. The project was aimed at sixth form and university students who were passionate about Read Article

Setting Up Concord Pro Revisions and Lifecycle Precursor To help PCB Designers to become better at what they do, there are various Blog series on Concord Pro which are presented in such a way that they are first broken into by categories. These categories walk through the entire process of efficiently using Concord Pro. At the end of each blog are practical steps you can take to get organized, and get the most out of Concord Pro for your PCB projects. Introduction We are continuing to set up Read Article

Best Practices Cultivating a Healthy and Productive Remote Working Environment A leading research and advisory company, Gartner, Inc., found that nearly 75% of the 317 CFOs and business finance leaders they surveyed planned to move at least 5% of their formerly on-site workforce into permanently remote positions even after the COVID-19-related quarantines have ended. Zach Peterson, prolific technology content writer, scientist/engineer, and owner and CEO of Northwest Engineering Solutions, joins the OnTrack Podcast to Read Article

OnTrack Newsletter: At Last...Engineering in the Cloud, RF Power Dividers and Brain Food - May 2020 OnTrack Newsletter May 2020 VOL. 3 No 12 Open Source Ventilator: Schematic to Fully-Functional in Thirty Days with Altium 365 ® On May 1, 2020, Altium 365 was released to the public, marking a historic day which represents an unprecedented shift in how electronics are designed and realized. With this cloud-based platform, design engineers can work from anywhere and connect with anyone--including all primary and secondary stakeholders. During the Read Article

Getting into the Ring with Altium “BattleBots” has delighted robotics aficionados for decades. Beyond the roar of the engine and the cheers of the crowd, learn how Altium is helping make the mightiest BattleBot “Mammoth” even mightier. Read Article

Innovators Around the Globe Contribute to Coronavirus Intervention Colin Keogh PhD, CEO & Founder at The Rapid Foundation, has been on the front lines of the effort to combat ventilator shortages ever since a Facebook group called Open Source COVID-19 Medical Supplies (OSCMS) first presented the problem. As cofounder of Open Source Ventilator (OSV) Ireland and a member of its core team, Colin offers his uniquely qualified perspective on open source innovation: its obstacles, its advantages, and its impact on Read Article

Altium DbLibs and Electronic Components in the Cloud with Altium Designer 20.1 Industry expert Davide Bortolami discusses what DbLibs are, how they work, what they can help you achieve, and how to integrate them with Altium 365. Spoiler alert: it’s disgustingly easy. Read Article

Rising to the Occasion with Altium Designer + Altium 365 Discover how Altium 365 with Altium Designer was central to bringing dozens of electrical and mechanical engineers, medical device designers, software and firmware specialists together at the height of the worst global pandemic in over a century Read Article

46:21 Webinar | Designing Structural Electronics Altium, a leading global developer of software for electronics design, and TactoTek, the leader in Injection Molded Structural Electronics (IMSE™) Watch Video

Breaking Out of the Office with Altium 365 A few years ago, I was working as a PCB design engineer for a company in the stunning Italian countryside, designing power inverters for water pumps. The work was as intricate as it was commensurately fulfilling, with every board presenting an extremely sharp dI/dt and stringent EMC and reliability requirements. Driving to work each day, with the hills slowly emerging from behind the freeway to reveal the tiny dot that was our factory, was scenic Read Article