Team Design Support Makes Rapid Prototyping a Breeze If you’re looking to document features and changes in your next PCB, word processing software and email chains simply won’t do the trick. Keeping information consistent over time and across an organization takes design software that enforces a consistent data format that is accessible by everyone on your team. If you’re using design modules with different workflows and data formats, you might as well be creating documentation using pen and paper Read Article How to Reduce Differential Noise in RS485 Communication I’ve never been a morning person and pride myself on simply getting dressed and making it to work on time. Although I typically beat the traffic and appear at the office just in time, there have been occasions when I’ve arrived wearing mismatched socks. In these situations, I walk straight to my desk and hope that my embarrassment stays unnoticed. In electronics, you might deal with a completely different type of embarrassment if you fail to keep Read Article How to Expand Input and Output for a Microcontrollers Circuit Board When working through practice boards and schematics very early on in my education, I remember more than once thinking about simply increasing the board size so that I could fit my components properly and make routing easier. It definitely would not have helped, and I’m glad I persevered in finding solutions through the challenges, but there are still times in my career where I’ve looked at the necessities of devices and wished I could just make Read Article Altium's Bill of Materials Software: Get Rid of ORCAD's BOM and Keep It Simple With ActiveBOM I don’t know about you, but I have no desire to be a software engineer. I want software that does routine tasks in the background, leaving me to focus on creative activities. Leaving behind rote demands moves my day into dealing with higher-level details like how electricity flows through components. That’s why I’ve ditched ORCAD Bill of Materials software and moved on to Altium’s ActiveBOM–the best Bill of Materials software. Making Bills of Read Article Test Out and Validate High-Speed Designs with Signal Integrity Simulation Sometimes the biggest onion can’t be peeled. It seems simple enough. You pick up an onion, a knife, and get going. It would be nice if all of life were so simple, and I suppose it is if you can just break each task into a simple series of steps. Along with intuitive tools, each step leads to the next and pretty soon you’re sending commands from your smart phone to your food processor before you get home. Signal integrity simulators feel like a Read Article Using Altium's PDN Analyzer and Incorporating Simulation-Driven Workflow If you’ve ever placed your hand near the vent on your computer, you can get a sense for the heat being created by the motherboard. Fans are designed to remove heat generated by the components on your motherboard, particularly by your CPU and GPU. The same effects occur in PCBs, even if they do not include components that consume a large amount of power. Power is consumed as it is delivered from the power source to the components, and power drops Read Article Optimizing Design Output Files for Large Batch Production For as long as PCB designers have used CAD tools to design their circuit boards, they have also had to create output files from those CAD tools to get the design manufactured. This used to be a time-consuming task involving a lot of manual intervention. You would have to create several related documents in addition to the data files, and perhaps even use a different design tool to create manufacturing drawings. Anymore though, the process of Read Article 50 Advanced Layer Stack Manager Watch Video 57 Stackup Impedance Profiles Manager Watch Video PCB Creativity and Training: Utilizing Creative Routing Solutions with Tight Component Placement When I was working in a research lab and designing PCBs for our homemade optical systems, my layouts were down and dirty. We didn’t worry about little things like packaging, limited board space, or compact routing. We were happy as long as we could get all of the required components to appear on the board and eventually the board became a printed circuit. Once our microscope systems became more intricate, connecting our high speed, custom images Read Article 3:06 Diff between sheet n Doc templates Draftsman - How-To:ADSCvid Watch Video Design Survival Guide in a World of Parts Shortages Every EE and PCB is feeling the pinch of component shortages these days. How in the world have basic standard capacitors become scarce? When are we going to see the end of this annoying state of affairs? How can designers work around these shortages and get their work done--on time?! I gave John Watson of LeGrand a call to ask these questions and more. As a PCB design lead who oversees 50 designers globally, I knew he’d have a lot to share on Read Article Altium Resources for Learning PCB Design At Altium, we continually produce and publish resources to help you be the best you can be, as well as help enable you to take full advantage of the features found in Altium. Since there is so much available, we thought we’d share a few shortcuts to finding whatever resource it is you’re looking for. AltiumLive: Annual PCB Design Summit is our live event where we share lots of great teaching by industry leaders, Altium staff and Altium users Read Article Easily Placed Surface Mount Technology with 3D Viewing Software Years ago while designing a printed circuit board for one of my company’s products, I was called over to the mechanical design department for an impromptu meeting. They had pulled in my design files into their 3D mechanical CAD system and wanted to show me something. There it was as big as life; one of my tall electrolytic capacitors was sticking up right through the plastic enclosure. While trying to restrain their laughter, they sarcastically Read Article What Every Scope User Needs to Know About Transmission Lines - Eric Bogatin Read Article How a Components Search Engine Helps You Choose Parts For Your PCB If you owned a computer during the 1990’s, then you remember when internet search engines became massively popular. Most homepages were likely set to one of the three or four major search engines. This made surfing the digital highway so much easier, and now search functionality is integrated in many different websites and applications. Anytime you need to quickly locate specific entries in a large database, using a search engine is the fastest Read Article Browsing Electronic Component Distributor Inventory with Integrated Libraries Even though I make a lot of lists just to keep track of all the different activities going on with my business, it gets tiring. When I need to buy office supplies, it helps to have all my options in one place so that I can figure out where I need to go to buy everything. Thankfully, when you’re sourcing for your PCB, there are solutions that show you all your distributor options. Browsing through distributor websites to source components for your Read Article Pagination First page « First Previous page ‹‹ Page128 Current page129 Page130 Page131 Page132 Page133 Next page ›› Last page Last » Load More
