Culture Shock: Agile and Individual Accountability for Mechanical Engineering An engineer's prime responsibility has traditionally been to design products for form, fit, and function. It's worked just fine, or well enough, up to this point, right? Well, that depends on how you look at it. A substantial percentage of organizations today report missed deadlines, delayed projects, or canceled projects altogether. Products are changing, and this brings new challenges to the industry. They're becoming less mechanized and more Read Article 46 Customizable Layer Stack Table Place and customize a layer stack table including width, text, and alignment directly in your PCB workspace. Watch Video 1:14 Find Similar Components Watch Video 48 New Snapping Options Enhanced snapping options allow for a smooth and controlled design experience for both routing and placement. Watch Video 42 Transparency Support Ensure fit, form and function with Altium Designer advanced multi-board viewing features Watch Video 3:31 About the Altium Designer 19.1 Update In this video, Ben Jordan talks about the Altium Designer 19.1 software update, what’s new with some features and bug fixes, and why anyone with Altium Designer should update to this latest release. Watch Video 37 Keepout & Component Selection Redesign Watch Video 28 Manufacturer Sheet Layer A specified manufacturer sheet layer in your design allows manufacturer information to be included within your gerber files. Watch Video Passive Intermodulation in PCBs for 5G Systems 5G networks are coming. Are your PCBs ready? Anyone pays attention to the top bar on their phone has noticed the 4G indicator. If you use a major wireless carrier in the U.S., you’ll likely see 5G in the top bar once you buy your next smartphone. 5G systems designers, especially PCB designers, will need to work with higher frequencies, faster data rates, lower power budgets, and plenty of other performance requirements. Nonlinearity will also Read Article Clearing Up Trace Impedance Calculators and Formulas While it might not be obvious to the casual or to those who think the mathematics underlying PCB design is largely settled, there is plenty of disagreement regarding the right formula to calculate trace impedance. This disagreement extends to online trace impedance calculators, and designers should make themselves aware of the limitations of these tools. The Problem with a Trace Impedance Calculator If you use your favorite search engine to find Read Article Budgetary Quote Early in the Design Process New products that will be produced in high volumes always start with a prototype, and multiple boards will end up being built throughout the product design and development process. Costs involved have to be scrutinized along the way and at each stage in prototyping, and one way to do this is to request a budgetary quote for your design. Budgetary quotes provide an estimate for procuring the PCB, assembly services, and the parts in the assembly Read Article Benchmarking Practices and Process for PCB Designers Benchmarking is a company-wide process for analyzing company performance against industry leaders. Companies use it to better understand how their top products perform and allows them to develop plans to improve or adapt specific technologies or practices. Benchmarking uses a set of metrics to measure performance, such as cost per unit of measure, productivity per unit of measure, cycle time of x per unit of measure or defects per unit of measure Read Article Why PCB Data Management is Important Recently, I celebrated a birthday. Although I do not want to give away my age, let us say I can easily order from any senior menu in a restaurant. I realize the older I get that either I am slowing down or things are speeding up. I concluded it was a bit of both, but much more of the latter. In the words of Charles Dickens in the literary classic A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times it was the worst of times.” Those in the electronics Read Article PCB Designers Motivated by Data Quality When you look at the many steps involved with a single PCB design, it is easy to get lost in those details. Figuring out our next steps is often overwhelming. When that happens to me, after taking a deep breath, I repeat a common phrase that has become my professional mantra. “Eat the Elephant.” The old riddle is, how do you eat the elephant? Answer: One bite at a time. It is a skill to take a massive project and break it down to its parts Read Article PCB Library Standardization: How to Build a Clean and Consistent PCB Data Library Judy Warner : Cherie, before we get started, please take a moment to define what a “library” is and what the full scope of that entails. Cherie Litson : Most of us would define a “library” as a consistent file of symbols and a consistent file of footprints (decals, land-patterns, etc.) connected with some form of a database. You don’t even need to have the database, just a good schematic symbol file and a footprint file and a method to link them Read Article Dk Values And How Datasheets Impact Your Design In this OnTrack episode we'll talk about Dielectric constant (Dk) and the difference between Design Dk & Process Dk. How datasheets can be confusing and can impact your design? Listen in for more. Read Article PCB Signals: Key Elements of High-Speed PCB Design Understanding the Challenge How Long is too Long? Matching the Impedances Where does the Return Energy Flow? Differential Pairs What about Vias? Crosstalk Dancing in Time The Board The Materials The Layers Possible Layer Stackups Understanding the Challenge The purpose of this article is to introduce the key elements of high-speed design and then discuss how each of those elements is tackled in Altium Designer. 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