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Design Libraries
1:7:21
How To Import Libraries and Manage Components With Altium 365
Nothing causes more worries for a designer than the PCB components. Your mind probably starts racing whenever you send out a design for fabrication and assembly, and phone calls start coming in. What did I forget? Did I use all of the correct components? Did I make a mistake that's going to cost the company? Can we meet the deadline to get the design respinned? Why can't I get this right? The problems you can experience with components and
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Best Methods for Calculating SMD Pad Size in PCB Design
Component creation requires accurate SMD pad sizes in your PCB footprints. See how to determine pad sizes for your SMD components.
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Footprint Creation Made Easy
Learn how to create footprint with ease using the IPC Compliant Footprint Wizard, built-in to Altium Designer. In this guide, you’ll learn how to quickly create an example SOIC-8 footprint, including automatic generation of an accurate 3D model.
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Monte Carlo Analysis With Transfer Functions in Cascaded Circuits
Pro circuit designers don’t just work with components in parallel and series when they design circuits. One way to build circuits is with circuit networks, which will have input and output ports. What happens inside each network can be analyzed in the traditional way (SPICE, by hand, etc.), but what is important is that the network maps an input voltage/current pair to an output voltage and current pair. Mathematically, this is quantified with a
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What's In Your BGA Land Pattern and Footprint
BGA land patterns aren’t always contained in a datasheet. If you need to create one of these, how large do you make the pads, solder mask, and fanout style? Learn more in this article.
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What Is Solder Mask Expansion and Which Value Should You Use?
The solder stop mask layer caps off the PCB and provides a protective film over copper on the surface layers. Solder mask needs to be pulled back from landing pads on the surface layer so that you have a surface where components can be mounted and soldered. This removal of the solder mask from a pad on the top layer should extend some distance around the edge of the pad, creating either NSMD or SMD pads for your components. How far back should
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Guide to Ceramic Capacitor Dielectrics and Other Types
Capacitor electrical behavior is determined, in part, by the capacitor dielectric. Learn all about capacitor dielectrics in this article.
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Creating High Pin Count Schematic Symbols Quickly
Making schematic symbols is quick and painless when you use regular expressions and leverage Altium Designer’s expansive toolkit.
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Ferrite Core Selection and Design Decisions
When designing a transformer or using a ferrite core inductor, you must use the correct design process, and there is no substitution for real-world final testing. Let’s look at the process.
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PCB Silkscreen Guidelines
PCB silkscreen helps ensure your board is easy to read and test, and it aids assembly by clearly indicating component locations.
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Altium’s Parameter Table Editor Lets You Control Your Project Settings
There’s a lot of data that goes into any PCB design project. The design files and project files all have their own parameters, and these can be customized to provide plenty of useful information for data management. ECAD software users need a simple way to keep their parameter sets organized within their project files, component libraries, and much more. Parameters can appear in all types of objects in your ECAD software, as well as in any type
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Altium Designer Beats Any OEMSTrade Electronics Part Search
Finding and sourcing new components for your design should be an easy process. Parts specifications can get very detailed, and there are many component options and part browsers on the market (e.g. Ultra Librarian, SamacSys, DMS, etc.). How can designers narrow down to the components they need and source components from authorized distributors? Using an OEMSTrade electronics part search and other distributor websites only gives you a partial view
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Low Pass Filter Simulation for Your PCB Design
Many engineers will do some basic calculations by hand in order to understand their filter and amplifier circuits. However, for complex circuits that do not obey standard series and parallel rules, or that use nonlinear components like diodes and transistors, more sophisticated methods are needed. As such, designers need an easy-to-use but powerful simulation application to aid filter design and simulation. Some programs make simulations
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Build an Electronic PCB Schematic Symbols Library in Altium Designer
Electronic symbols are the basis for the CAD documents you’ll create before you prepare a circuit board layout. An electronic symbols library contains basic symbols and figures that are used in electrical drawings, and they need to be linked to the PCB footprints that will appear in your PCB layout. When you need to prepare and organize clear PCB layouts and electrical drawings, you need a reliable source of CAD symbols and PCB footprints, and it
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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
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Online Circuit Block Diagram Maker: Your Guide to Building PCBs with Altium Designer
Some PCB design software packages make you feel like you’ve been bamboozled. On one hand, you’re told that you’ll have access to tools that will let you move through the entire design process. Then all of a sudden, you can’t finish your design without purchasing critical features as add-ons. Only Altium Designer integrates all the best design tools in a single circuit diagram maker. You can get access to free versions that include critical design
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Quickly Replicate Circuits with a Connection Room in Your PCB Layout
Modern PCB designs can get very complex, and designers need tools to help them stay organized. Schematic sheets are a great start, but simply organizing different circuit blocks into different schematics is not enough to ensure your designs are organized. Altium Designer unifies your schematic design and PCB layout tasks into a single program, and it includes a PCB connection rooms feature to keep your circuit blocks synchronized. Here’s how you
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