PCB Design Resources and Information

Explore Altium's Resource hub to discover content from blog posts and design guides to technical white papers, all gathered together for your convenience and written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

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Designing to Prevent Manufacturing Change Orders - AltiumLive 2022 You as a product designer can prevent changes from impacting your production and cost once it’s in manufacturing. We’ll talk Watch Video

Stop Getting Stuck - AltiumLive 2022 Order from chaos. Train your engineer. Scope the ECO. Breaking down barriers and predicting and assessing and solving the puzzle Watch Video

Characterizing & Troubleshooting Wireless and IoT Self-Generated EMI - AltiumLive 2022 It is fairly common to find multiple onboard sources of energy causing EMI on today's portable, mobile, and IoT devices Watch Video

How Resilient is Your BOM? AltiumLive 2022 Learn how to ensure resilience of your BOMs using Octopart’s supply chain information within Altium Designer and how the newest Nexar API integrated within your MRP/ERP system can make a positive difference for you! Watch Video

Physics of Failure Analysis for PCBs and Electronics Assemblies See why high reliability designs are approached with techniques known as Physics of Failure. Read Article

#PCBeTheChange Student Design Competition Winners Announced! | Upverter Education Announcing the winning teams of the Upverter Education #PCBeTheChange student design competition! Read Article

Eliminating Nuances in the PCB Manufacturing Processes What is a PCB designer's role in improvement of manufacturing processes and capabilities? Let’s talk about design WITH manufacturing with Amit Bahl, the director of sales and marketing at Sierra Circuits. Read Article

What Would You Do With a 5 Day Chip Supply? US companies are reduced to a 5 day chip supply due to demand pressures and a long-lasting shortage in semiconductors. Read Article

PCB Design Interview Questions: A Guide for New Engineers Newer PCB designers: here’s what you’ll face during your first round of job interviews. Follow these tips if you want to make an impression. Read Article

A Guide to Mode Conversion, Its Causes, and Solutions Differential pairs are most often discussed in terms of their impedance and length matching tolerance, both with the goal of ensuring proper termination at the receiver and suppression of common mode noise. On interconnects, such as board-to-board connections or cascaded transmission line arrangements, you have an important EMC compliance metric that is sometimes overlooked. This is mode conversion, which can be visualized in an S-parameter Read Article

Differential Stripline Impedance Calculator Try our differential stripline impedance calculator, built based on Wadell’s equations. Read Article

Differential Microstrip Impedance Calculator Learn more about using and interpreting results from a differential microstrip impedance calculator. Read Article

Preparing your files for Fabrication Release When you’re done creating a new board, it’s time to send your design data to the manufacturer. Before releasing your Watch Video

PDN Impedance Simulation and Analysis in SPICE PDN simulations can be performed in SPICE if you know how to properly model parasitics and inductive effects in power integrity analysis. Read Article

When Do PCB Power Plane Resonances Occur? Do you know when a power plane resonance occurs in the PDN on a circuit board? We’ll examine when this occurs and what causes it. Read Article

What is Spreading Inductance? The spreading inductance of a plane pair has a simple meaning, but it can be difficult to calculate. Here are some points designers should know about the spreading inductance of a plane pair. Read Article

Overview of PCB/PCBA Reliability Testing and Failure Analysis PCB reliability testing and failure analysis go together. Here’s what you need to know and how to get started. Read Article