PCB Design Collaboration

Modern electronics requires collaboration between multiple design domains and team members. Browse our library of resources to learn more about using the best PCB design software to collaborate with your team members and customers.

MCAD Collaboration Sharing Through Altium 365 Collaborate with PCB Manufacturers ECAD Data Management

Part 1: Why Your PCB Design Review Process Is Obsolete and What You Can Do About It

Part 1: Why Your PCB Design Review Process Is Obsolete and What You Can Do About It A printed circuit board (PCB) design review is a practice to review the design of a board for possible errors and issues at various stages of product development. It can range from a formal checklist with official sign-offs to a more free-form inspection of schematic drawings and PCB layouts. Some companies do it completely in-house, while others get help from design firms and contractors. In many cases, they involve their contract manufacturers Read Article

Design Your Small Circuit Board in Altium Designer

Design Your Small Circuit Board in Altium Designer Large circuit boards, small circuit boards, and anything in between might seem like they need separate sets of PCB layout features. In reality, your PCB design software shouldn’t delineate your PCB design based on size. Whether you need to design a large or small circuit board, a design application with high-quality CAD tools will help you get the job done quickly and prepare your board for production. Small circuit board designs are much easier Read Article

Project History in Altium 365

Project History in Altium 365 Altium 365’s Project History shows changes to the project's documents and the timeline since the project was launched. Read Article

Interactive Commenting in Altium 365

Interactive Commenting in Altium 365 With Altium 365 Interactive Commenting, your comments provide you instant access and complete visibility to any design changes, so your explanations are all in one place. Read Article

Part 2: Why Your PCB Design Review Process Is Obsolete and What You Can Do About It

Part 2: Why Your PCB Design Review Process Is Obsolete and What You Can Do About It As we established in Part 1, the PCB design review and collaboration practices have room for improvement in many organizations. To address this, we developed Altium 365. Let's examine how running a PCB project through Altium 365 compares to other methods. One source of truth, visibility, and version control To start using Altium 365, you need to create a workspace and a centralized location for your design files, libraries, and collaboration Read Article

ECAD MCAD Integration

Mechanical and Electrical Design Come Together With Altium’s MCAD CoDesigner Electronics designers working in small design houses or in large enterprises often encounter a common set of challenges when interfacing with mechanical designers. For many new products, the mechanical form factor requirements will constrain the electrical design in terms of physical layout, location of interfaces, and component selection. For many electronic products, flex and rigid-flex board designs require careful modeling of the mechanical Read Article

Designing for Shock Management in Avionics PCBs

Designing for Shock Management in Avionics PCBs Of all the electronics application areas, there is one that needs to carefully consider mechanical and thermal shocks during design: avionics. An avionics system that is put into production within a satellite, aircraft, or spacecraft can experience strong vibration and mechanical shock during flight, and these systems need to be designed with high reliability in mind. IPC standards, MIL-PRF standards, and other standards specify some design Read Article

PCB sharing

PCB Sharing and What Data You Can Share in Altium 365 Open up your design data files with your team using the PCB sharing features in Altium 365. Read Article

What is ISO 14300

What is ISO 14300 In looking for the answer of what is ISO 14300, find out about space exploration device requirements and the potential behind CAD tools. ALTIUM DESIGNER PCB Design software with excellent communication through the design process. The International Standards Organization (ISO) represents 163 national standards bodies and functions as an independent, non-governmental entity. ISO meetings bring experts together to share knowledge and to gain Read Article

PCB Library and Supply Chain Integration in Altium Concord Pro

PCB Library and Supply Chain Integration in Altium Concord Pro Anyone planning to manufacture a new circuit board has plenty of challenges to overcome. From component shortages to outdated design data, project managers and designers face obstacles to timely production that arise from stale component data and supply chain information. Sourcing shouldn’t be guesswork, and it shouldn’t require 3rd party tools that only provide visibility to a portion of the supply chain. Supply chain changes can catch any Read Article

PCB Design Reuse and Product Lifecycle Management in Altium Concord Pro

PCB Design Reuse and Product Lifecycle Management in Altium Concord Pro Reusing design data is a great way to hasten redesigns of existing hardware. Managing this design data, including version control and component data management, can be a real challenge. Production lead times are decreasing, component lifecycles are shorter, replacement parts are pushed to market sooner, and design data steadily grows as new designs become more complex. Reusing design data for a portion of an existing board or functional blocks Read Article

Connectors Benefit from Compatible ECAD/MCAD Tools

Modeling and Placing Connectors Within Altium Designer ALTIUM DESIGNER The most powerful, modern, and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use. I/O use connectors for PCB system integration In this guide to PCB connectors, we’ll take a look at connectors within electrical systems, how they benefit from ECAD/MCAD tools, and optimal design specifics like appropriate cable connectors or gold fingers gold plating. Connectors abound on printed circuit assemblies given integrated electrical Read Article

How to Keep Your 3D PCB Models Current with Data Management Tools

How to Keep Your 3D PCB Models Current with Data Management Tools Any component includes a significant amount of design data. This includes electrical models, 3D component models, and PCB supplier information. Your PCB design software should be allowed to take this data and integrate it with your MCAD tools. This allows you to create 3D body models from your PCB footprints and integrate them into a data library. Ensuring that this data stays up to date takes a data management platform that operates directly Read Article

Create, Share, Collaborate, and View CAD Drawings with Altium Designer

Create, Share, Collaborate, and View CAD Drawings with Altium Designer PCB design collaboration is easy with a complete set of design tools and a cloud platform to view CAD drawings. Your PCB design features should make it easy to create a circuit board and take it through manufacturing. Instead of settling for freeware CAD programs or mechanical programs like AutoCAD, your team can connect through powerful tools that allow secure access to all design files in a PCB project. Whether you need to view your board or Read Article

Jira for Hardware Development

Jira for Hardware Development: Tools and Processes New collaboration tools can create a Jira for hardware development-type process for PCB designers and electrical engineers. Read Article

How the Best Integrated PCB Libraries Lower Development Costs

How the Best Integrated PCB Libraries Lower Development Costs With development schedules becoming tighter and technology advancing at an ever faster pace, designers and engineers need tools that help them cut development costs and stay competitive in every way. This means designers need supply chain tools that help them compare electronic component prices and manage their fabrication data in a single program. Each integrated library helps lower development costs and time by providing the supply chain Read Article

Spot Copper Connection Errors in Design Rule Checks

Instantly Check Every Copper Connection With Rules-Driven PCB Design Tools It’s easy to find errors in most simple PCBs. Simply scan through your critical nets and trace each copper connection from source to load. Today’s printed circuit boards are not so easy to inspect and validate by eye. Even relatively simple low-speed boards can have hundreds of components packed into a small space, and it’s easy to get lost in a complex PCB layout. Today’s modern designs demand modern design tools. Altium Designer users have Read Article