Create a BOM That Works for Everyone For me, socks have always been about utility: they keep my feet from getting blisters. Yet for years I have spent far too much time sorting and organizing my socks to match up the colors. Browns with browns, blues with blues, and yellows with… well, to tell the truth, I would just throw those away. Yellow socks were just too weird for me. Then one day I decided to simplify my life and I replaced all my colored socks with plain black socks Read Article Thermal Pads vs Thermal Paste: The Best Choice for Mounting Your Heatsinks I used to work as a construction assistant, where my primary responsibility was to level properties before the heavy concrete trucks lay down a level foundation. It was a tedious and taxing job, but something that is quite crucial for a building for it to withstand years of use and abuse. I would run through a spit of land with nothing more than a shovel ensuring that the ground is flat and level within an inch tolerance. One inch leaves very Read Article The Difference Between Breadboard Projects and Prototype Layouts I was just making myself some lunch and cutting up some fixings for a sandwich when it occurred to me that I was using a breadboard. Although I’ve always thought of it as a cutting board, it is actually what my grandmother would have called a breadboard; a flat piece of wood for slicing bread. For those of us in the electronics world, a “breadboard” is something very different. So, I decided to look it up. I was surprised to learn that in the Read Article Soup-Up Your CAD Tools as a 64-Bit PCB Designer For all the hazards that come along with older cars—rips in their vinyl, paint missing, smoking, rusted frames, and oil leaking—I will admit they are fun. I owned a 1969 Chevy Impala and for all the bad, one thing going for it was that it had been built to go fast. Even though it had a 4 barrel Quadrajet carburetor on a 350 cu in small block driving 350 horses into a Muncie 4 speed transmission, it still would only carry 6 people (well, and the Read Article Learning Current Density: Don’t Pop the Balloon One area of PCB design that probably does not get the attention that it deserves is current density. Current density in a PCB trace is much like the pressure in a balloon. You want to squeeze as much air into the balloon as you can, but if you put too much: boom! The same is true of PCB traces many times. We want the traces to be as small as possible yet carry the most current possible, and if the trace carries too much: boom! For PCBs, that boom Read Article ALTIUM EVALUATION GUIDE FOR PADS® USERS Read Article Five Tips Guaranteed to Reduce PCB Design Time Most engineers and PCB designers are creatures of habit. Once a roadmap has been prepared for creating successful products, that is the road most often traveled. We often don’t have the time to experiment with new techniques or look for new, innovative ways to accomplish tasks, and while that is not always a bad thing, it does not bode well if our competitors are creating successful products faster and cheaper than we are. To maintain your Read Article Net Clearance Rules Designers now have the ability to set specific parameters between same net objects when placing primitives on a board. Restricting space allows you to maintain clearance for primitives, and restricting primitives of the same net to a set clearance ultimately allows greater flexibility when forcing electrical primitives to interact with other electrical objects in a specific manner. INTRODUCTION Clearance rules set requirement constraints that Read Article Which is better for Altium WP PCB: polygons or planes? PCB designers have two choices when implementing large copper areas for power and ground regions: polygons or planes. Users often ask which is better a polygon or a plane for implementing power and ground nets, but both design features produce similar end results. Once you’ve decided which type of structure is most useful in your PCB polygon layout, you can place the structure you need for your design using the right set of CAD tools in your PCB Read Article Not That Much Force: Software for Updating PCB Layouts and Avoiding Redesigns The other night I went to see the new Star Wars movie, “The Last Jedi," and although I really enjoyed the movie I found myself laughing out loud during one sequence. I wasn’t laughing because of the humor of the movie, or a silly looking alien—there were plenty of those to go around already. Instead I was laughing because for one brief sequence they showed some electronic circuitry that appeared to be composed of what looked like thru-hole Read Article The Best PCB Component Placement Software Helps You to Efficiently Finish Your Placement Remember when we were kids and our parents gave us permission to do something fun but first we had to finish our chores? Now, taking out the garbage, folding clothes, and mowing the grass I’d prefer compared to budgeting for vacations or renovating bathrooms. Getting the chores completed lets me move on to something that is at least significantly more convenient and in many cases more fun. When I’m designing, I have similar chore preferences and Read Article Pass The Baton Well to PCB Design Successors Have you ever walked into a new job, first-day energy rolling through your shoulders, only to sit down and look at the notes left from the person who last had your job and know exactly what the problem was: poor organization. Poor organization is usually pretty noticeable in any work process; however, it takes on its most detrimental final form when you are trying to train someone based on the poorly organized leftovers of someone else. Early in Read Article No More Wrong Ports: Implementing USB Devices In Your Hardware Design I keep having what I like to call “Grouchy Old Man Thoughts” (GOMT). You know the type: “Why do I have to learn this new thing if what I have works for me?” or, “I wonder what it’d be like to have a conversation without them being on their phone half the time.” Well, my most recent GOMT has been that I think anyone born after the 90s is pretty lucky, technologically. They didn’t have to go through the painstaking phase before Universal Serial Read Article High Speed Tips and Tricks Click the PDF above to read more about High Speed Design in this presentation. Or read the original, full-length content here: Introduction to High Speed PCB Designing: Is FR-4 the Best Board Material Choice for High Speed PCB Design? Board Layer Stackup Considerations for High Speed Board Design High Speed PCB Design Considerations: Component Shape Considerations High Speed PCB Design Considerations: Bypass Capacitor Place and Route Tips High Read Article Collaborative PCB Design PCB Design is a complex field and every step you take to design and develop a board has its own set of best practices. But what will truly move the needle in your design process? Collaborative tools that keep your team not only focused but in the flow. Altium has pioneered collaborative design for EDA tools because Altium PCB design tools start each iteration with ultimate productivity in mind. Join us in an exploration of collaborative PCB Read Article Best PCB Design Tips PCB Design is a complex field and it always pays to learn from other's mistakes so you can avoid repeating history. Here we have brought together a small collection of insights to help inform your design process. From implementing WDTs in your board design to determining components we want you to stand on the shoulders of giants when it comes to improving your design and yielding better results. Click the PDF above to read more about Best PCB Read Article The Best PCB Routing Software Helps You to Finish Your Design on Time When my first child was young, my wife and I didn’t have a lot of income. It took everything that we had to pay the rent and put food on the table. When it came time for Christmas I really wanted to buy my boy a present, but I didn’t have any extra money to spend. That was a really humbling moment when I couldn’t even afford an extra couple of bucks for a toy. Fortunately, my wife had been saving money all along in preparation for Christmas. When Read Article Pagination First page « First Previous page ‹‹ Page155 Current page156 Page157 Page158 Page159 Page160 Next page ›› Last page Last » Load More