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The challenges faced by today’s designers are rapidly increasing in scope and complexity. This leaves less time to properly organize, manage, and share the design data they create. Typically, unless they have access to dedicated IT resources, they are left with a choice. They can either implement and maintain an ECAD data management system themselves or forgo the advantages of proper data management and live with the potential for errant design...

Rules and constraints can impact design performance in high-speed signal busses, manufacturability, and other end-product considerations including mechanical enclosure design. Creating proper rules to drive the PCB layout can be a challenge. This challenge must be overcome to verify that your design meets specific manufacturing guidelines and ensure you have complete control over your board’s physical requirements. This on-demand webinar will...

To get started with revision control in Altium 365, please read this article about Project History. While you can still use the method below, we recommend checking out Project History for the latest and greatest.  Ever since I started using Github and Google Docs, I fell in love with revision control. Instead of keeping multiple copies of essential files and time-stamping every revision, revision tracking information gets stored alongside the...

RF PCBs can be complex boards that need careful interconnect design and layout. If you’re designing an RF PCB for microwave or higher frequencies, controlled impedance routing should be top of mind to ensure signal integrity. You can choose from many routing styles, but whichever routing style you choose, it should provide isolation against noise and crosstalk. A coplanar waveguide routing style is an excellent choice for RF PCBs as they can be...

One term that gets thrown about in RF PCB design topics is the use of a balun, but it can sometimes be unclear what these devices do or why they’re needed. In RF PCB design, there is sometimes a need to impedance match and convert between balanced/unbalanced signals simultaneously. This is where a balun comes in handy. If you’re wondering what is a balun in more detail, keep reading as this can be a rich topic. Some descriptions of baluns can be...

Whether you’re just getting acquainted with high bandwidth interconnect characterization or you’re getting familiar with the new IEEE P370 standard, 2x thru de-embedding will likely become a greater part of daily life for signal integrity engineers. The 2x thru structure is a standard test structure for interfacing between test connectors and a DUT for VAN measurements with the goal of extracting S-parameters or impedance measurements from high...

Whether you are an individual designer or a team of people, there are always others in the value chain that you rely on to turn your design from intent to reality. Making this happen means you have to collaborate and share. One of the problems is that the way this is done today can be cumbersome, error-prone and inefficient — we haven’t progressed much beyond phone calls and emails, until now. A decade worth of research and development with...

In all of our classes and consulting activities as well as the numerous articles we create, we always stress the importance of PCB documentation. Along with the PCB Fabrication Specification, this documentation is crucial to ensuring that a PCB is built right the first time and every time thereafter. Because the creation of this documentation occurs later during the design process, this step is given short shrift and/or not enough attention. When...

Judy Warner: Lawrence, you are working on a new groundbreaking Online Digital Experience that will further advance our focus on customer centricity; tell us about what this is and what it will mean for Altium users. Lawrence Romine: This is very exciting, Judy! As you well know, Altium’s success is built on our focus on the users of our products and services versus a classic value proposition aimed toward executive decision-makers. In our world...