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Altium Designer 20

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

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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.

Setting Up Concord Pro Revisions and Lifecycle Precursor To help PCB Designers to become better at what they do, there are various Blog series on Concord Pro which are presented in such a way that they are first broken into by categories. These categories walk through the entire process of efficiently using Concord Pro. At the end of each blog are practical steps you can take to get organized, and get the most out of Concord Pro for your PCB projects. Introduction We are continuing to set up Read Article

Best Practices Cultivating a Healthy and Productive Remote Working Environment A leading research and advisory company, Gartner, Inc., found that nearly 75% of the 317 CFOs and business finance leaders they surveyed planned to move at least 5% of their formerly on-site workforce into permanently remote positions even after the COVID-19-related quarantines have ended. Zach Peterson, prolific technology content writer, scientist/engineer, and owner and CEO of Northwest Engineering Solutions, joins the OnTrack Podcast to Read Article

OnTrack Newsletter: At Last...Engineering in the Cloud, RF Power Dividers and Brain Food - May 2020 OnTrack Newsletter May 2020 VOL. 3 No 12 Open Source Ventilator: Schematic to Fully-Functional in Thirty Days with Altium 365 ® On May 1, 2020, Altium 365 was released to the public, marking a historic day which represents an unprecedented shift in how electronics are designed and realized. With this cloud-based platform, design engineers can work from anywhere and connect with anyone--including all primary and secondary stakeholders. During the Read Article

Getting into the Ring with Altium “BattleBots” has delighted robotics aficionados for decades. Beyond the roar of the engine and the cheers of the crowd, learn how Altium is helping make the mightiest BattleBot “Mammoth” even mightier. Read Article

Innovators Around the Globe Contribute to Coronavirus Intervention Colin Keogh PhD, CEO & Founder at The Rapid Foundation, has been on the front lines of the effort to combat ventilator shortages ever since a Facebook group called Open Source COVID-19 Medical Supplies (OSCMS) first presented the problem. As cofounder of Open Source Ventilator (OSV) Ireland and a member of its core team, Colin offers his uniquely qualified perspective on open source innovation: its obstacles, its advantages, and its impact on Read Article

Altium DbLibs and Electronic Components in the Cloud with Altium Designer 20.1 Industry expert Davide Bortolami discusses what DbLibs are, how they work, what they can help you achieve, and how to integrate them with Altium 365. Spoiler alert: it’s disgustingly easy. Read Article

Rising to the Occasion with Altium Designer + Altium 365 Discover how Altium 365 with Altium Designer was central to bringing dozens of electrical and mechanical engineers, medical device designers, software and firmware specialists together at the height of the worst global pandemic in over a century Read Article

46:21 Webinar | Designing Structural Electronics Altium, a leading global developer of software for electronics design, and TactoTek, the leader in Injection Molded Structural Electronics (IMSE™) Watch Video

Breaking Out of the Office with Altium 365 A few years ago, I was working as a PCB design engineer for a company in the stunning Italian countryside, designing power inverters for water pumps. The work was as intricate as it was commensurately fulfilling, with every board presenting an extremely sharp dI/dt and stringent EMC and reliability requirements. Driving to work each day, with the hills slowly emerging from behind the freeway to reveal the tiny dot that was our factory, was scenic Read Article

25:57 Intelligent Supply Chain Webinar Many factors can affect your supply chain. Currently, supply disruptions are being felt due to the effect of the Covid-19 Watch Video

Schematic to Fully-Functional in Thirty Days with Altium 365 Judy Warner: Dugan, you've been running Altium Designer on Altium 365 at Velocity Research for a while now as part of our Beta group. We recently also sponsored your efforts with the Open Source Ventilator project by giving your team access to licenses for Altium Designer 20.1, and Altium Concord Pro running on the Altium 365 platform. What’s been your early impressions and key takeaways after working in the Altium 365 environment? Dugan Karnazes Read Article

What is Burn-in Testing for Electronics? Once you’re planning for production of any new board, you’ll likely be planning a battery of tests for your new product. These tests often focus on functionality and, for high speed/high frequency boards, signal/power integrity. However, you may intend for your product to operate for an extreme period of time, and you’ll need some data to reliably place a lower limit on your product’s lifetime. In addition to in-circuit tests, functional tests Read Article

PCB Via Current-Carrying Capacity: How Hot is Too Hot? One common question from designers, particularly new designers that are learning about industry standards, is regarding the current-carrying capacity of conductors in a PCB. Trace and via current-carrying capacity are legitimate design points to focus on when designing a new board that will carry high current. The goal is to keep conductor temperatures below some appropriate limit, which then helps keep components on the board cool. While the Read Article

Altium Designer Viewer Mode Datasheet Securely view, print, and cross-probe single documents or entire projects in one comprehensive interface. Download PDF

Bluetooth 5.1 SoC vs. Module: Which is Best for Your Design? The list of features available in Bluetooth just got a little longer since the release of Bluetooth 5.1. Component manufacturers have taken this mobile technology to the next level for IoT devices by integrating wireless comms with an MCU for embedded processing. This is just another step in the continuous push to pack more functionality into a smaller footprint. If you want to incorporate a Bluetooth 5.1 SoC into your new product, you have two Read Article

How Copper Foil Roughness Affects Your Signals and Impedance The history of engineering, both electrical and mechanical, is littered with approximations that have fallen by the wayside. These approximations worked well for a time and helped advance technology significantly over the decades. However, any model has limits on its applicability, and the typical RLCG transmission line model and frequency-independent impedance equations are no different. So what’s the problem with these equations? Senior PCB Read Article

Altium 365: Work from Anywhere, Connect with Anyone Altium 365 has launched in the midst of a worldwide quarantine effort. Lawrence Romine explains how the launch timing couldn’t be more serendipitous. Read Article