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.

Use PCB Routing Tools With an Integrated Trace Length Calculator If you’re a mechanical or electrical designer, you need CAD tools that provide accurate trace length and geometry calculations. Once you start working with high-speed or high-frequency circuits, propagation delay and skew become critical points to consider as you need to make sure your signals are properly timed throughout your nets. Altium Designer is the only PCB design package that includes an ultra-accurate trace length calculator for PCB Read Article

Schematic Drawing Software and PCB Layout Tools in Altium Designer Every circuit board starts with circuit diagrams and schematic sheets. Your schematic capture software takes your component and footprint data and creates an initial layout, which you then route to create a complete circuit board. If you’re just getting started with PCB design, you need a schematic diagram maker that helps you quickly move component data into a new layout. You shouldn’t need to use multiple programs to move from schematic drawing Read Article

Best Software for PCB Design and Manufacturability (DFM) Guidelines Getting your circuit board to manufacturing requires following certain manufacturability guidelines. Once you gain an understanding of DFM standards, you will be in a much better position to design your circuit boards to meet DFM expectations. As a PCB designer laying out a circuit board, you’ll find yourself having to manage these guidelines and standards to get your board through the manufacturing and assembly process. Altium Designer makes Read Article

Altium Rigid-flex Guidebook: Your Complete Design Guide Many electronic devices don’t live on a single printed circuit board. Flex and rigid-flex PCBs are used to link multiple rigid PCBs together into a single unit. This allows printed circuit designers to customize their board to odd enclosures, design motion into new devices and provides unique form factors that are not possible with rigid boards. Many other common devices are shrinking, and the PCBs that power them are following suit. If you’re Read Article

The Best Schematic Design Program for PCBs PCB design begins with a schematic, where you turn your design ideas into working circuits. When you use the right schematic design program to create your circuit boards, you can design and simulate your board in a single program. Once you use integrated schematic capture, you can start your circuit board layout and create real circuit boards. Only Altium Designer gives you all these features and many more in a single program. ALTIUM DESIGNER A Read Article

How to Build a Circuit Board With Altium’s PCB Design Software Your printed circuit board (PCB) design might be designed to be electrically correct, but you also need to be assured it can be manufactured. Even though you need a PCB manufacturer to fabricate and assemble your board, you need to implement design for manufacturing (DFM) to ensure your board can be manufactured at scale. Making sure your design is manufacturable is all about encoding DFM specifications in your design rules. With the rules-driven Read Article

Look No Further than Altium Designer for the Best PCB Design Software When it’s time to buy new PCB design software, you only want to buy the best of the best, and you’ll probably look through a PCB design software list to find the tools you need. Open source software carries zero price tag, but it simply isn’t capable of tasks professionals need to perform every day. If you’re considering a new PCB design software package, consider this first. You need all the tools the industry demands, and there is no reason to Read Article

Power Delivery Analysis: Getting Started with PDN Analyzer If you’ve ever been involved in RF design, high-speed design, high current design, or all these areas combined, you know the importance of power integrity in your PCB. If power delivery in your next PCB design is a critical performance factor, you need simulation and analysis tools that are accessible alongside your standard PCB design features. Here’s how the PDN Analyzer feature in Altium Designer can help you diagnose and correct your power Read Article

Advanced High Density PCB Design in Altium Designer HDI PCB design and manufacturing push electronics and circuit boards to their limits. As electronics become faster and more capable, they require greater functionality in a smaller package. From smartphones to smartwatches and other IoT devices, HDI design is slowly becoming the norm rather than the exception. Keeping up with new technology and design techniques means that designers need to rethink how they layout components, as well as design Read Article

Create Your PCB Design Workflow for Military Systems in Altium Designer No matter which industry or vertical you work in, you’ll need to follow important design, performance, and manufacturability standards. These requirements are more stringent when working with military-grade electronic systems. When you work with design software built on a rules-driven design engine, meeting these important standards becomes much easier. Altium Designer gives you the power to prepare a compliant PCB design and prepare manufacturer Read Article

Design Basics for HDI and Planning for the HDI Manufacturing Process As the world of technology has evolved, so has the need to pack more capabilities into smaller packages. PCBs designed using high-density interconnect (HDI) techniques tend to be smaller as more components are packed in a smaller space. An HDI PCB uses blind, buried, and micro vias, vias in pads, and very thin traces to pack more components into a smaller area. We’ll show you the design basics for HDI and how Altium Designer^® can help you create Read Article

The Best PCB Design Software Features a PCB Trace Impedance Calculator PCB trace, pad, and via features are some of the most important in your circuit board and need to be carefully designed. The right cross-sectional PCB trace area and distance to the nearest reference plane will ensure your PCB trace impedance is consistent throughout your board. It can also help suppress temperature rise if your board will operate at a high current. Choosing the right trace dimensions in your printed circuit board represents a Read Article

PCB Impedance Calculator and Stackup Design in Altium Designer There are many demands placed on PCB stackup design. High-speed designs carry a requirement for controlled impedance, crosstalk control, and the need for interplane capacitance. Impedance in your traces becomes a critical parameter to consider during stackup design for high-speed PCBs, but the stackup will also influence crosstalk susceptibility and sheet capacitance between ground and power planes. While you can work out many of these details by Read Article

The Best High Speed Design Tools in Altium Designer Building your next high-speed PCB takes the best design and analysis tools. Your high-speed design tools should make it easy to route connections, place components, and design your stackup in a way that ensures signal integrity and prevents unintended crosstalk. Your analysis tools should help you identify problem areas in your PCB, and your design tools should help you quickly implement redesigns in your PCB. With the high-speed PCB design Read Article

All About PCB Loss Tangent: What it Means and When it Matters Do you know the PCB loss tangent for your laminate? Learn more about this important factor and how it affects your signals. Read Article

The NVIDIA-Arm Deal Will Expand Hardware for AI and Deep Learning Read more about the recent NVIDIA-ARM deal and what it means for PCB designers. Read Article

Embedded Systems Firmware and Hardware in the Cloud Embedded systems firmware development is easier when your hardware designers and coders can work together in the cloud. Read Article