Design Libraries

Designing to Military Grade Electronics: PCB Specifications with Altium Designer

Designing to Military Grade Electronics: PCB Specifications with Altium Designer Military-grade PCBs carry stringent performance, sourcing, and manufacturing requirements that are encoded in a number of standards. Preparing your next Printed Circuit Board for a military electronics system for manufacturing and assembly must also follow important sourcing and quality standards. Meeting all of these requirements is easiest when you have access to all your design and production planning tools in a single program. Only Altium Read Article

Designing Physical Layer Security for Military PCBs in Altium Designer

Designing Physical Layer Security for Military PCBs in Altium Designer PCBs for military systems are high performing beasts that must meet stringent design and performance standards. Military systems that store and process sensitive data require extra layers of security that goes beyond locking them in a secure enclosure. You’ll need to design your Printed Circuit Boards to be extremely resistant to EMI, route data so that it cannot be tapped passively, and include blacked-out chips to prevent attackers from Read Article

Data Management for Component Models in SPICE Simulations

Data Management for Component Models in SPICE PCB Simulations Simulation software is becoming more powerful as time goes on, but the simplest solutions are sometimes still preferable for many applications. SPICE simulations have been around for decades, yet their applicability to a wide variety of circuits and applications is not lost on anyone. With SPICE simulation tools being so popular, it’s only natural that they appear in PCB design software platforms. Devices continue to become more powerful and more Read Article

The What, Why and How of Data Management

The What, Why and How of Data Management More than 15 million components to choose from to design your board, where do you begin? Watch and learn from the Library Management expert himself John Watson. Read Article

Advanced Tools for Your Aluminum PCB Layout

The Best Printed Circuit Board Design Software for Your Aluminum PCB Whether for thermal performance, electrical isolation, or mechanical strength, your aluminum PCB needs the precision of Altium Designer to meet your design requirements. Altium Designer allows almost any aspect of your circuit boards to be customized, including the metal core or backing on an aluminum PCB. Designers can also specify other materials in their documentation for their fabricator, such as ceramics, aluminum flex PCBs, or other 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 becomes seamless with a complete suite of design tools and a cloud platform for viewing CAD drawings. Your PCB design software should streamline the entire process, from creation to manufacturing. Instead of relying on freeware or mechanical programs like AutoCAD, empower your team with powerful tools that enable secure access to all design files in a PCB project, ensuring efficient and effective collaboration. Whether Read Article

How the Best Integrated PCB Libraries Lower Development Costs

How the Best Integrated PCB Libraries Compare Electronic Components to 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

symbolic division

Guidelines for Creating Useful PCB Schematic Symbols The PCB schematic symbols that you use to represent the components are at the heart of your schematic design. The quality of the PCB symbols and how it is arranged can be one of the most critical factors influencing your schematic’s readability. Poor quality PCB schematic symbols will lead to an unreadable schematic sheet that is difficult to understand. I created the largest open-source library for Altium Designer over five years ago, initially Read Article

PCB design reuse

Complete Guide to PCB Component and Design Reuse in the Cloud Isaac Newton once said "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." Not all designs need to be remade from scratch, and if you organize your designs properly you can easily reuse your old design data in a new project. PCB design reuse practices are great for cutting down design time and ensuring all your products live up to the same level of quality. It’s all about making sure the knowledge you’ve gained from building Read Article

What They do not Teach you About Capacitors

What They Don't Teach You About Capacitors In engineering, we often adopt hundreds of mental shortcuts in order to keep the complexity of the topics we tackle to a manageable level. If we were to run a quantum-physics simulation every time we flash an LED, we would never get anything done. Yet, many of these shortcuts and rules-of-thumb were created in times past , when the electronics industry was radically different than what it is now. Today, we are going to unlearn what a capacitor is Read Article

Transmission Line and PCB Track Design

Transmission Lines in PCB Track Design Digital designs fall broadly into two categories: low-speed and high-speed. The category “high speed” does not necessarily mean a high clock rate. Rather, it refers to the rise time of the signal during switching, which leads to propagating wave behavior on long PCB tracks. When a PCB track gets too long, it needs to be designed like a transmission line, not just a simple conductor with DC resistance. Understanding how to design transmission Read Article

How to Find the Transistor Parts You Need for Your Circuit Board

How to Find the Transistor PCB Parts You Need for Your Circuit Board Design Transistors are vital components in power supplies, high-power ICs, and embedded systems, enabling efficient switching in electronics, sensors, and analog systems. To streamline design and ensure proper functionality, access to comprehensive PCB supply chain tools is essential for sourcing and integrating transistor parts seamlessly into your projects. When you use the complete set of PCB design tools in Altium Designer, you can do more than Read Article

PCB Relay Selection, Design, and Layout are Easy in Altium Designer

PCB Relay Selection, Design, and Layout are Easy in Altium Designer Circuit protection is vital for user safety and for protecting a board from electrical damage. Whether you’re working with a small, moderate power PCB or a large, high voltage electromechanical system, power surges or faults can destroy components and create hazards for users. The best way to ensure your next device remains safe from high voltage ESD or large current surges is to use a simple PCB relay. Compared to large relays that need to be Read Article

Spot Copper Connection Errors in Design Rule Checks

Copper Connection Software: Instantly Check Every 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

Build Your Next LED PCB Design in Altium's Unified Environment

Build Your Next LED PCB Design in Altium's Unified Environment LED driver boards can be challenging designs when running at high power and high voltage. Power systems for driving devices like LED panels need careful planning and layout for power supply sections, and the LED PCB board design itself needs to be laid out to ensure low-temperature operation. These objectives can be difficult to balance without the best PCB LED circuit design software features and DC analysis tools. When you need to create a high Read Article

PCB Developing: Preparing Your Circuit Board for a PCB Etching Service There are times where you don’t need to produce a finalized, silk-screened board at high volume, and you may only need to use a blank PCB with no components or silkscreen. Blank PCBs can be useful for prototyping, breadboarding, experimenting with components, and accessing external traces. These boards do not need to go through a special production process, they only need a limited documentation package to begin fabrication. ALTIUM DESIGNER^® The Read Article

Transition from Hobby PCB Maker to Professional Designer with Altium

Transition from Hobbyist PCB Manufacturer to Professional Designer with Altium Most new designers start off with freeware when they need to create their first PCB designs, but free PCB design software lacks many features required to create real circuit boards. Hobbyist PCB designers and makers need a range of tools to create high-quality circuit boards and eventually create real devices. Instead of using free PCB layout software and other programs to help get designs into production, hobbyist PCB makers need professional Read Article