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PCB Design Outputs & Documentation

Make sure your manufacturer understands your design intent with complete and accurate design outputs. Browse our library of resources on documenting your PCB design to ensure defect-free manufacturing with high yield. Topics covered include creating your bill of materials, generating manufacturing data, and file formats.

Generating Gerber Files Preparing Multiple Design Outputs in Altium Designer Push to Manufacturing with Altium 365 Design For Manufacturing

Creating a Ground Plane for Your PCB Design It used to be that printed circuit boards seemed to have the same basic layer configuration, or at least that’s the way I tend to remember it. This meant that they were usually six layer multi-layer boards, with a ground plane and a VCC plane. The old CAD systems didn’t really have the ability to do much with power planes except to designate layers as a bottom layer or the like. The most you would see in them would be some “X’s” where there was Read Article

Identifying Minimum PCB Trace Spacing and Width in Altium Designer Taking the time to set up routing rules to govern the minimum trace spacing and trace width for PCB layout can be tedious. Many designers would prefer to jump in and start trace routing without going through this setup process first. This can be dangerous though as you may inadvertently route a trace routing at the wrong width, or pack your routing in so tightly that you don’t have the room to make any width corrections later on. The more rigid Read Article

Utilizing a PCB Transmission Line Calculator Makes Design Easier Calculators are impressively helpful with your PCB designs; however, having these calculations built into your PCB design software user interface is beyond fantastic. ALTIUM DESIGNERDesign software tools that can augment your circuit board calculations. Power supply designers understand the complex technical details and functional requirements involved with a switched mode power supply PCB layout. The layout establishes the functional and thermal Read Article

Step Up Into Altium Designer from PCAD The original goal of PCAD, to give PCB designers the best tools possible, lives on today in Altium. Altium Designer is made for designers like you, and will import your legacy PCAD designs so you can continue your work. ALTIUM DESIGNERCAD software that will continue through the years. Back in 1982 an innovative new PCB design software CAD tool called P-CAD was introduced to the world. This PCAD PCB design tool quickly outgrew its competition and Read Article

The Best EDA Software for PCB Design You don’t have time for underperforming tools that are difficult to learn and use, you need the best EDA software for PCB design that you can get; Altium Designer. ALTIUM DESIGNERThe most powerful, modern and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use.You’ve got a job that needs to be done and that means the printed circuit board design is your responsibility. You don’t have time for PCB design tools that are underpowered and second rate Read Article

Designing and Simulating a Photodiode Circuit for Your PCB Your design tools should give you an easy way to create circuit diagrams, simulate electrical behavior, and start a new PCB layout. A photodiode circuit is important in many applications, ranging from simple ON/OFF light detection to receiving digital data in an optical fiber. These semiconductor devices are similar to a regular diode, but they can be difficult to simulate without the right component models and circuit design tools.With Altium Read Article

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

Complete Guide to PCB Aging Test Methods A finished PCBA that will be deployed in the field should pass several tests to ensure reliability and stable operation. Industry standards specify multiple testing methodologies, performance requirements, evaluation metrics, even test fixtures that must be used to assess electrical behavior, thermal cycling resistance, long-term thermal stability, ability to withstand thermal shock, and much more. With Altium Designer, you’ll have a complete Read Article

Complete Power Supply Filter Design and Simulation Guide A PCB for a power supply can be as difficult to design as high-speed networking equipment and complex embedded systems. These circuit board designs need to account for a range of behaviors and safety requirements, especially when dealing with high voltages and currents reaching the output of the power supply. In addition to safety standards involved in power supply PCBs, component selection is critical for ensuring the design can provide the Read Article

Importance of Signal Integrity for High Speed Designs in Your ECAD Software High speed PCB designs use digital components that have very fast edge rates in their output signals. These components are commonly called “high speed,” and the signals they source can experience significant degradation in standard PCB materials. Signal integrity for high speed PCB designs is important for ensuring data can be passed between components on a PCB, and to ensure signals can be interpreted by a receiver component. There is also the Read Article

How to Design and Fabricate a 4-Layer PCB Stackup with Altium Designer Every PCB design project starts with a stackup that has clearly defined signal and plane layers. Make sure you choose the right stackup for your design, and make sure you design your stackup to comply with your fabricator’s requirements. A 4-layer PCB stackup may seem simple, but it needs to be designed with the right layer arrangement to ensure correct fabrication and impedance. Utilize the right PCB design software that helps you build the best Read Article

Customize Your PCB Drill Sizes With Altium Designer Every PCB will need some holes, vias, slots, and other features that are defined in a PCB layout. These features need to be reflected in fabrication documents, and designers need tools to help them automate this process of creating documentation directly from their designs. It’s easy to keep track of your holes, vias, electrical behavior, and much more in Altium Designer, the industry’s top PCB design application for professional design engineers Read Article

Design Your Metal Core PCB in Altium Designer Most printed circuit boards use a thick FR4 core layer to provide structural stability and interior copper layers for a multilayer PCB. If problems like excessive heat and low thermal dissipation are required in your particular application, you might consider designing with a metal core PCB. You’ll see other advantages like greater structural integrity, as well as a natural EMI shield thanks to the internal metal core. These circuit boards Read Article

IPC Classes and Complying with IPC Standards for PCB Design Whether you work in electronics design, manufacturing, or even defense, the alphabet soup of standards organizations is extensive and may seem daunting. The IPC standards are among the most widely accepted and important standards for PCB design and manufacturing. IPC standards will influence how a designer creates their board and how they will prepare it for production in different industries. These standards are meant to ensure performance and Read Article

PCB Routing Guidelines for Altium Designer Routing traces and vias on a PCB design is often thought of as a simple task. After setting up the footprint library and then perfecting the placement of the components on the board, it would seem a relatively easy matter to simply “hook ‘em up.” While that may have been true back in the days of routing low speed TTL DIP components on simple boards, today’s design requirements are much more complex.Whether you’re working through a high speed PCB Read Article

Designing for Multiple PCBs in the Same Project Majority of our PCB designs sit as a single PCB under our Altium Designer projects (i.e. .PrjPcb file). Now and then, we design using variants with different stuffing options. It seldom happens that we have a single project that requires multiple PCBs with various stuffing options, but when it happens, a lot of us tend to get stuck. All too many times, I have seen designers fork (i.e., copy and paste) a project and then add slight variations to Read Article

How to Use Design Data and PCB Templates in the Cloud Altium 365 provides an easy way to store, manage, and access PCB templates as part of design reuse. Learn more in our short guide. Read Article