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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.

Choosing Replacement Components With an Integrated Library Choosing Replacement Components With an Integrated Library Much as we would like, designing a new product or system is not without its hiccups. Designs, functionality, and component changes may be made at the last minute, forcing design modification or component replacement. Replacement circuit components or replacement can require thorough knowledge of your circuit boards. Repairing a circuit board is often more than finding a circuit breaking. Electrical equipment and service panel tinkering can go so Read Article
Connectors, Tooling Holes, and Fiducial Markers for Component Placement and Orientation Connectors, Tooling Holes, and Fiducial Markers for Component Placement and Orientation When you’re a new systems designer, manufacturability of your designs is probably the last thing you think about. When I was younger and worked on a new electro-optics system, I was dismayed to learn that a system I designed needed a complete redesign. In its current state, the thing was unlikely to ever make it off the manufacturing line. PCBs should also be designed such that manufacturing is streamlined. Orientation, landing type, and holes Read Article
Integrated Design Software vs. Access Databases For Bills of Materials Integrated Design Software vs. Access Databases For Bills of Materials Building databases in programs like Access is easy enough. Access databases deserve a lot of credit for helping organize tons of information in one place. But adapting these programs to electronics design can be a real challenge. Any PCB that is intended for manufacturing must have a corresponding bill of materials. This document is critical as it lists all of information about your PCB in a standardized format. Your bill of materials contains a Read Article
Why Constantly Updating Component Libraries are Boons Why Constantly Updating Component Libraries are Boons If you’re my age or older, you might remember looking through the card catalog at your local library. Lacking any digitized system, thumbing through a list of information on paper was the only way to find the book you were looking for. This might be fine for finding books in a hurry, but it is a terrible system for locating the components you need for your PCB. Within the potential production environments, PCB layout is only one piece of an ever Read Article
HDI PCB Designs and the CAD Tools Behind Them HDI PCB Designs and the CAD Tools Behind Them Although it is said that the only guarantees in life are death and taxes, I would submit that the third guarantee in life is that electronic devices will continue to get smaller and smaller. I’m pretty sure that no one wants their cell phone to grow back to the size of a brick again, so to continue this path of ever decreasing sized electronics means that circuit boards need to shrink in size as well. The best way to do this is to use high Read Article
Don’t Let Your Unrouted Nets be Traces to Nowhere Don’t Let Your Unrouted Nets be Traces to Nowhere Have you ever seen one of those movies where a train is barreling down the track and starts to cross a bridge only to realize further down the line that the tracks run out and the bridge goes nowhere? That is a scary situation and only an alert train driver, formerly known as a train engineer, can prevent a catastrophe. Although, not as catastrophic, having unrouted nets on your board can wreak havoc to your PCB’s operation. Unrouted nets are Read Article
1:1:30 Understanding Rules And Constraints This webinar will discuss how Altium Designer supports your design process with hierarchical rules and constraints. Knowing how to define Watch Video
Manufacturing Documentation with Duane Benson Manufacturing Documentation with Duane Benson Manufacturing documentation is crucial. Get pro tips from Duane Benson of Screaming Circuits on how to deliver the ideal manufacturing documentation package, so all the technical details are documented exactly as needed. Every fabrication and assembly house is different, so it pays to prepare in advance and find out what documentation to produce for your design to be manufactured. You don’t want to miss this week’s episode; it’s full of practical Read Article
Stay Grounded: Digital, Analog, and Earth Ground in PCB Layout All About Grounding in Electronics Design and PCB Layout The concepts of grounding techniques, earthing, making ground connections, and chassis ground are all very convoluted in electronics, despite international standards that have tried to separate concepts and terminology. Grounding is important in every aspect of electronics design, electrical work, and of course, in PCB design. All circuits will need a reference connection, which is something that we call ground, but the exact reference is defined Read Article
Eliminate the Crosstalk: LVDS Routing and the Art of Differential Signaling Eliminate the Crosstalk: LVDS Routing and the Art of Differential Signaling During a typical baseball game, coaches use the silent language of hand signals to instruct batters and baserunners while catchers use similar signs to recommend pitches to pitchers. Players in the outfield and the infield use hand signals to find the right locations when anticipating the skills of a batter. Electronics has its own version of a silent language with the variety of signals exchanged almost instantaneously within a circuit. Single Read Article
Worry Less About Schematic and Layout De-Sync Worry Less About Schematic and Layout De-Sync Drawing out your next great idea on the back of an envelope is much easier than drawing out a PCB by hand. This is where PCB software becomes important and is used to take your design all the way to production. Your schematic and layout need keep your design data synchronized throughout the design entire process. Keeping all your design data synchronized across your design tools is critical to maintaining high productivity. Your design software Read Article
Microvia Sizing in Your Next Multi-layer PCB Microvia Sizing in Your Next Multi-layer PCB If you’re not familiar with PCB design or electronics in general, you probably wonder how newer electronics can pack so much functionality into progressively smaller devices. It takes more than just Moore’s Law, it takes creative PCB design methods to pack all that functionality into a single device. Vias make their mark in multi-layer PCBs and are used to route connections between board layers. PCB designers should consider via inductance, via Read Article
Mitigating High Junction Temperature to Optimize PCB Performance Mitigating High Junction Temperature to Optimize PCB Performance I consider myself a great multitasker, especially when it comes to preparing meals for my son. I’ll have fish frying in one pan, soup boiling in the other, and potatoes in the oven. Things usually go as well as planned except on rare occasions when one of the dishes burns while I’m absorbed in other tasks. Fortunately, these temperature problems won’t cost me much more than a few dollars and some time. In electronics, your hardware can literally Read Article
Mechanical System Verification Keeps Production Optimized Mechanical System Verification Keeps Production Optimized These days, electronic packaging is more than just a neat rectangular box with some holes drilled for input and output cables. Electronics are sleeker with uniquely-shaped packaging, and your PCB needs to fit into tight clearances. Whether it is through design optimization with collaboration between design engineers and mechanical engineering, or through a production process with strong inventory management and verification software, you may have Read Article
High-Speed Design: Definitive Guide for Utilizing Altium Designer for Your Board Needs High-Speed Design: Definitive Guide for Utilizing Altium Designer for Your Board Needs There was a time in printed circuit board layout when working with high-speed designs was a living nightmare. Those older CAD tools just didn’t have the horse-power or the functionality to help much when it came to working with the extra design requirements. Differential pairs had to be routed together manually, and measured trace lengths had to be calculated by hand. And if that wasn’t hard enough, trying to determine the total length of a Read Article
PCB Routing Tips: Navigating Your Way Through BGA Fanout Options PCB Routing Tips: Navigating Your Way Through BGA Fanout Options Tom rose through the ranks of his company to become the new vice-president. He had worked hard, forged relationships, and consistently built his knowledge about the company. Unfortunately, Tom also contracted a serious disease called acronymitis that spread like the plague throughout key sectors of the company. Try as he might, Tom could not resist speaking in acronyms. Sometimes, his wife would hear him talking in his sleep—in acronyms Read Article
Copper Efficiency and its Impact on Electronics Design and Manufacturing Copper Efficiency and its Impact on Electronics Design and Manufacturing We learned early in our engineering education that copper is the most widely used metal to conduct electricity. The industry trade group, Copper Development Association, indicates that 61% of all mined copper ends up as an electrical conductor in a never-ending list of applications. Further study shows that choosing a metal for use in an electrical circuit goes beyond its ability to conduct electricity, and includes such things as electrical Read Article