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

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.

Altium 365 Getting Started User Guide - Available Now Hi Everyone, A month ago, I announced the release of the Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide. This week we are following up with the release of another helpful guide: Altium 365 Getting Started User Guide. The Altium 365 cloud platform offers the most connected experience for PCB design and realization with direct access from Altium Designer or any web browser. All active subscribers can access Altium 365 to unlock powerful functionality Read Article

OnTrack Newsletter: Modern Concurrent Collaboration with Your Supply Chain and Your Team, Brain Food - August 2020 OnTrack Newsletter August 2020 VOL. 4 No 2 A New Experience of Digital Collaboration has Positive Impact on Calumet Electronics In this article, we interview Rob Cooke of Calumet Electronics, a US Based PCB Fabricator in Michigan. Cooke shares his recent experience collaborating on a multi-board design with a design engineer and EMS provider using Altium 365. He talks about his impressions and the implications this will have on design engineers Read Article

Eric Bogatin Debunks Common Misconceptions About Transmission Lines In this episode, signal integrity expert Eric Bogatin aims to give PCB designers some needed guidance when it comes to dealing with transmission lines. Read Article

Insertion Loss is a Complex Issue: John Coonrod is Here to Explain It The OnTrack Podcast welcomes John Coonrod back to the show. John is Technical Marketing Manager at Rogers Corporation and a senior engineering professional with a rich background in PCB design, fabrication, processing, and modeling. John also has extensive experience with circuit materials, making him the ideal candidate for the topic of today’s podcast: insertion loss. Listen to the Podcast: Download this episode (right click and save) Watch the Read Article

US Department of Transportation Seeking Alternatives to GPS GPS-capable devices range from your phone to your smartwatch; simply type in your destination and follow the directions. Simple, right? According to the Washington Post, we should all stop using GPS as it’s ruining the navigation centers of our brains. Despite the neurological effects on perception and judgment, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) aims to find alternatives to GPS to provide redundancy. What started as a defense initiative Read Article

12V DC Uninterruptible Power Supply I live in a rural village that tends to have intermittent power when there are high winds or storms. Because of this, my computers, servers, and network equipment are all on relatively low-cost, uninterruptible power supplies. These all run on sealed lead acid batteries and are not an overly efficient way to power a DC device such as a Raspberry Pi or internet router as the incoming mains. AC charges a DC battery, which then creates AC power Read Article

How To Actually Evolve During COVID-19 Angus Thomson is Senior Electronic Engineer and founder of CircuitBuilder, a brand new platform for simplifying the development of custom electronics out of Suffolk, England. Angus joins the OnTrack Podcast to share his experiences as CircuitBuilder founder, and to discuss the resilience of CircuitBuilder’s business model in a global pandemic Listen to the Podcast: Download this episode (right click and save) Watch the video: {"preview_thumbnail" Read Article

DesignCon 2020’s ‘Engineer of the Year’ Talks Power Integrity, Picosatellites, and Simulation Tools Istvan Novak, Principal Signal and Power Integrity Engineer for Samtec Inc. and winner of the DesignCon 2020 Engineer of the Year Award joins the OnTrack podcast to talk about picosatellites, simulation tools, and the rising importance of power integrity. Listen to the Podcast: Download this episode (right click and save) Watch the video: {"preview_thumbnail":"/sites/default/files/styles/video_embed_wysiwyg_preview/public/video_thumbnails/dUBig Read Article

The “Mini Monkey” Board – Using the LPC55S69 in the VFBGA98 Package For as long as I can remember, I have been a microcontroller addict. In 2020 there is no shortage of component selection. We are also at an interesting period where MCUs can tackle complicated tasks that we may have chosen a high-end applications processor for. Quite a bit of my career has been focused on doing really awesome things in the MCU space as you get a great balance of cost, design control, and simplicity. I am always on the lookout for Read Article

AltiumLive 2020 goes “Virtual” Like most events in 2020, Altium is transitioning our annual flagship conference, AltiumLive, to an online experience this year. We will host our North American event from October 6-8, and our European event from October 20-22, 2020. And the best part is...it’s free to attend! While nothing can duplicate the experience of a live event or being physically together, we are busy planning ways to deliver our unique AltiumLive experience in the first Read Article

26:26 CoDesigner and MCAD Component Placement We design products not just PCBs requiring effective collaboration between MCAD and ECAD engineers. We need to consider how we Watch Video

28:11 Using Version Control in Your PCB Project Webinar Version control has been a staple of software development for decades, but hardware development can benefit just as much from Watch Video

18:49 Communicating Design Intent with Manufacturing Outputs No one wants to do a board respin because of inaccurate or incomplete manufacturing outputs confusing design intent. This webinar Watch Video

27:51 Group Editing Tools and Methods in Altium Designer Webinar Do you ever have to edit a large group of objects on your design? Whether you are dealing with your Watch Video

Level Up Your Design Skills - Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide We are happy to announce the release of the new Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide. Whether you are new to Altium Designer or you want to brush up on some topics, the Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide will take you from a beginner to a master in PCB design. This is only the beginning! This guide will be updated with new information based on user feedback. Let’s first go over the contents of the guide. Read Article

50:48 PCB Component Placement Webinar Proper component placement is one of the most important aspects of PCB design. You need to familiarize yourself with the Watch Video

How Material Characteristics Factor into High Speed PCB Signal Performance Evaluating laminates for a particular PCB implementation can be a complex, multilevel process, especially when it comes to the operation of key components on the board, such as high-speed differential pairs. This article will examine some of the factors that come into play with the evaluation process: materials with a low dielectric content versus materials that are low loss; comparing the advantages and disadvantages of each of them; taking into Read Article