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The most powerful, modern and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use

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Saving Time Routing in Altium Designer 20 Mark Ross is a long-time Altium Beta user and our guest in this podcast episode to share his insights and the value he gets from being a Beta user. He also chimes in on a long list of questions about what he thinks of Altium Designer 20. He gets into the details on this latest release of Altium Designer and what sets it apart from other eCAD packages, the most significant new feature, and - are there any designs the tool can’t handle? Listen in Read Article

Interface utilisateur moderne Download PDF

Delay Tuning for High Speed Signals: What You Need to Know Length matched lines in a PCB Take a look at two signal readouts on an oscilloscope, and you can see how length/timing mismatches between signal traces can improperly trigger downstream gates. The situation becomes worse when we look at the travel time for a master clock signal and the roundtrip time for sent/received data in different computer interfaces. SDRAM has solved this nicely by placing a clock in the slave device and sending a clock Read Article

Why Impedance Matching is Important in a Transmission Line Do you know the transmission line critical length for these traces? Whether you are working with digital or analog signals, you’ll most likely need to match impedances between a source, transmission line, and load. The reason impedance matching is important in a transmission line is to ensure that a 5 V signal sent down the line is seen as a 5 V signal at the receiver. If you understand why transmission line matching is important, you can start Read Article

Radiated EMI Sources in High Speed/High Frequency PCBs Radiated EMI measurements during EMC testing The image above shows a snapshot of results from an EMC test under CISPR requirements. This product is right at the edge of Class B limits on radiated emissions. We can see a very complicated resonance spectrum in this plot with a large number of sharp peaks superimposed on wide peaks at lower level. What causes all of this radiated noise? There a number of sources that can cause this type of emission Read Article

Flat vs. Hierarchical Schematics: Why You Need Dynamic Schematic Compilation Define a hierarchy for schematic designs In PCB design, organization is critical, and it takes a bit of experience to anticipate when you will need to use flat vs. hierarchical schematics. When I started working on one of my first projects, and as my design continued to grow in size and complexity, it quickly became obvious that I would never be able to fit all my components and connections into a single schematic, and it became extremely Read Article

How Absorbing Conformal Coatings Affect Your PDN and Radiated EMI Signal integrity analysis and measurements go hand-in-hand I remember the first time I—back in my days of working with sensors—pumped nitrogen dioxide into a humid environmental chamber while evaluating a DUT. Over time, the surface of my copper leads slowly corroded as they sat unprotected in such a noxious environment. As my electronics experiment was living a double life as a chemistry experiment, I questioned whether to use a conformal Read Article

Power Integrity Measurements for Your Prototype Board We often write about signal integrity and power integrity around here, but there is one area where we sometimes fall short: test and measurement. Both aspects of building a new device are critical for ensuring your board will work as intended and meets stringent performance requirements. With advanced systems, the level of testing and measurements required to qualify a prototype for full-scale production spans far beyond using a multimeter. Power Read Article

29:12 Altium Designer 20 - Key Features Sneak Peek Are you ready to meet the next generation of Easy, Modern, and Powerful PCB design? Watch this live webinar to Watch Video

Modern User Interface Download PDF

OnTrack Newsletter: Altium Designer 20 Sneak Peek, Impedance Measurement, Food for Thought - November 2019 OnTrack Newsletter Nov. 2019 Vol. 3 No. 6 A First Look Inside Altium Designer 20 November marks the launch of Altium Designer 20, and we thought you’d be like to hear from a couple of Altium veteran “insiders” about what you can expect to see in this latest release. Lawrence Romine, VP of Corporate Marketing and Ben Jordan, Technical Marketing Director, Corporate (both engineers) share what their favorite new features are and which ones they Read Article

Follow Your Multilayer Ground Return Path to Prevent EMI Make sure none of these traces crosses a ground plane gap Following the path back to ground can quickly become complex in a complicated multilayer PCB. When your PCB has a small layer count (e.g., a 4-layer board with two plane layers), it becomes rather easy to determine the return path and deliberately design it to prevent EMI. The situation becomes more complicated when you’re working with higher layer counts. Multiple plane layers and Read Article

Driving Small DC Motors With Altium Designer In this article, we’re going to run through the actual implementation of a driver IC from schematic creation to PCB layout. You will find this project on GitHub, released under an open-source license if you simply want to grab it to copy and paste into your own design. Part Selection I have two small, high-speed motors that I want to drive, which will draw about 1 amp each under load, and I’ll need to run off a 30 volt power source in an Read Article

Problems in Multiboard BOM Generation? Unified Design Tools Can Help Dealing with a multiboard BOM can feel like shuffling stacks of paper... Your next multiboard system is likely complicated enough. You’ve got to worry about multiple layouts, multiple schematics, signal integrity within and between boards, mechanical form and function, and EMI/EMC. With all these design aspects to worry about, documenting every aspect of your board can be a time suck. With so many new products being built from multiboard systems Read Article

Signal Distortion in Your PCB: Sources and Solutions Length matching for high-speed signals is all about synchronization... Signal distortion often gets a passing mention in many discussions on signal integrity and circuit analysis. As more networking products start running at higher speeds and use complicated modulation schemes, you’ll find that signal distortion becomes a serious problem that contributes to bit error rates. Distortion sources are cited as one of the primary bottlenecks preventing Read Article

Electronics System-Level Design in Altium Designer Electronics system level design lets you focus on functionality and abstraction The day-to-day life of a PCB layout engineer is all about translating schematics into a real, manufacturable PCB. Before this can happen, designs begin at an abstract level that focuses on designing functionality. As the overall design process progresses, design requirements are made more granular, reaching the signal processing level and, eventually, the component Read Article

How to Create an Amplifier Simulation in Altium Designer Length matching for high-speed signals is all about synchronization... We’d all love to get to the test and measurement stage quicker. It means you’ve finally gotten through the design phase and you’re ready to test prototypes. It might also mean you’ve narrowed down to the components you need for your system and your evaluating proposed functionality for your system. Tests and measurements with your circuits are very important, but they won’t Read Article