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Explore content from blog posts to technical white papers gathered together for your convenience. All written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

Hardware Design for Edge Computing vs. Cloud Computing The next great developments in IoT products are in edge computing. The term “cloud computing” is now a regular piece of technical vocabulary, and for some time it was viewed as the solution to every data-intensive computing problem. While cloud computing certainly gives many developers a simple way to create value and scale quickly, edge computing is quickly becoming a viable alternative to deploying software applications on the cloud. In fact Read Article
Tricks of the Trade: Signal Integrity Devices As with any job, Signal Integrity engineers use niche tools. SI tools are often thought of as S-parameter viewers, 3D EM solvers, or measurement equipment. These tools have one thing in common: analysis. What about the devices that SI engineers deploy to make their lives easier? In this article, I’ll discuss three devices to save time and money: multiport test cables, RF switches, and the old RC filter. Multi-port RF Cable Assemblies Today’s high Read Article
Say Hello to the First Space Tow Truck Artist's impression of MEV-1 (silver) attached to communications satellite (copper) (Image source: Northrop Grumman) Things are moving quickly in space these days (no pun intended). I like to think that I keep my ear to the ground, but I was surprised to discover that Northrop Grumman's Mission Extension Vehicle-1 (MEV-1), whose mission is to essentially act as a space tow truck, successfully launched a week ago. Riding on top of a Russian Proton Read Article
Building the Right Team for Electronics Design: A Deeper Investigation In Building the Right Team for Electronics Design: An Introduction we discussed the concept of creating a diverse team of people with a diverse set of skills. In today’s market, it is virtually impossible to build a team of homogenous engineers who can deliver from start to finish. Each engineer, possessing unique skill sets, contributes to the sum of parts within the design lifecycle. In this article, we will dive more deeply into the different Read Article
Continuous Deployment: An Implementation Using Altium Designer In Continuous Integration and Deployment in ECAD we discussed the concept of Continuous Deployment within a build system. In this article, we will take a deeper look at how to set up continuous delivery and deployment systems so your team and vendors can enjoy a continuous stream of updated ECAD packages for review. Continuous Deployment/Delivery: Revisited In Continuous Integration: An Implementation Using Altium Designer we went through the Read Article
Blind And Buried Vias—what Are They And How Are They Used? As noted in several of my previous articles as well as a large majority of other published documents, component lead pitches have become increasingly fine, and smaller form factor devices have come to dominate a large number of the products (cell phones) being developed today. The question of how to connect components to both sides of these crowded PCBs should be among the first factors taken into account by a product development team. Typically Read Article
Augmented Reality is Poised to Change the World Imagine 50,000 fans streaming HD video on 5G phones (Image source: pixabay.com) One of the big topics on everyone's lips at the moment is the forthcoming deployment of 5G smartphones and infrastructure. As I wrote in my 5G Meets 50,000 Fans at Super Bowl 2025 column on EEJournal.com, I was idly watching some adverts on television when I saw one showing people streaming video from an American football match. This set me to wondering what the Read Article
Altium VP, Lawrence Romine on Altium Designer 20 Listen to the Podcast: Lawrence Romine, VP of Corporate Marketing for Altium discusses what new features you can expect from Altium Designer® 20, which will be available later this year. Download this episode (right click and save) Watch the video: Show Highlights: Lawrence has been with Altium for almost 15 years. At the time, the move to offshore manufacturing was prevalent and his previous experience with semi-conductors and FPGAs fit in well Read Article
Assuring Design Coherence in a PCB Introduction There is a saying “that it’s not how you start that is important, but rather how you finish.” Which is perfectly ok when you are talking about sports and you get off to a bad start need to recover in the second half. However, when it comes to PCB design, it’s not a very good practice. If things start badly, they usually don’t recover, and it continues down the same path—which ends up costing more money and lost design time. At one Read Article
Concord Pro and Component Creation Introduction First off, before I say anything, the more that I have been using Altium Concord Pro™, the more I like it. In fact, I love it. Altium has surprised me many times with the quality of the tools they put out. A few examples: Draftsman®, ACTIVEBOM® or ActiveRoute®, and Concord Pro (which I would categorize as one of the best). How have I survived up to this point without them? I know through my involvement with Altium and the fact that I Read Article
Never Underestimate the Power of a Mock-Up The ability to do a 3D mock-up within your design software, is an invaluable tool that no doubt has prevented countless re-designs and revision changes. This is particularly powerful in the world of flex and rigid flex. When the circuit is intended to be bent, folded, or formed it is very easy to make a mistake with pinouts and orientation. Before the power to model this within the design tool, paper-dolls and mylar cut outs were often used to Read Article
The Newest Advances in EDA: Modular Electronics Design EDA has come a long way since the 1960’s. Image source: Autodesk Before the birth of EDA, circuit boards and integrated circuits were all designed by hand or some other manual process. The need for more advancement in electronics design made clear the need for automation, a transition which took roughly 10 years and began with drafting in the mid-1970s. The publication of “Introduction to VLSI Systems” by Carver Mead and Lynn Conway in 1980 paved Read Article
What is the Return Current Path in a PCB? Do you know how to determine the return current path in this PCB layout? One of the fundamental aspects of any circuit diagram is the return current path. In a circuit diagram and a schematic diagram, the path that electric current follows to return to the low potential side of a power source should be obvious, but it may not be so obvious in a PCB. To quote the great Eric Bogatin at his PCB West 2019 presentation, the distinction between a Read Article
Common SMT Process Defects to Avoid During Soldering Soldering robot for PCB assembly As more designs are using smaller components with surface mount pads, Surface-mount Technology (SMT) process defects can mount and impact yields due to various design and manufacturing problems. These problems may have been minor and had negligible effect on yields in the past, but they can cause rework costs to mount quickly and should be avoided. Here are some basic SMT process defects you can avoid during Read Article
PCB Design For Test Structures And Tests Performed, Part 2 In Part 1 of my article I outlined the various test structures that can and should be incorporated into any given PCB design. Included in this was a description of how they are built, where they are located and how they are used to ensure PCB structural and performance integrity. As speeds have increased and designs have become much more complex, test structures have become a necessity rather than features that can be added indiscriminately. And Read Article
PCB Design For Test—Test Structures And Types Of Tests, Part 1 An important part of any high-speed design is making sure it can be tested successfully during manufacture and operation. Since these tests are performed significantly downstream from the PCB design process, they are not often properly and thoroughly accounted for as part of this process. This article will address two important aspects of the design for test process: creating test structures (aka test point connections) within the board, and Read Article
Communication from Design to Assembly In a perfect world, a box and enclosure are designed, and then printed circuit boards or flexible circuits are designed to fit within that box perfectly, meeting all the electrical and mechanical requirements of the project. Sadly, most of us don’t get to work in that perfect world and at times must deal with challenges to that original plan. Things don’t always work as expected. Sometimes that is because something obvious was missed., Often it’s Read Article