About Author

Jack Olson

Jack Olson has been designing circuit boards for over thirty years. He has CID,CID+ certification from the IPC, has served in several IPC Standards Development Committees, and has been awarded three Distinguished Service Awards for his participation. He enjoys all aspects of circuit board development, feels grateful that he is able to solve puzzles for a living, and hopes to continue "surfing the learning curve".

Recent Articles

Circuit Board Design for In-Circuit Testing with Jack Olson

Circuit Board Design for In-Circuit Testers There are many types of circuit board tests available in electronics manufacturing today, each having unique goals and characteristics. This article presents guidelines at the design level (schematic and layout) to enable the use of in-circuit testing (ICT) fixtures to verify proper component assembly. These simple test fixtures allow your board to be tested as its assembled, which helps identify and remove failed boards from your production run Read Article

Getting Started in Altium Designer | Changing the Rules!

Getting Started in Altium Designer | Changing the Rules! The Altium Designer environment is controlled by rules, which are created using a powerful tool called the “PCB Rules and Constraints Editor”. By creating rules before component placement and routing starts, Altium can warn you or prevent you from making mistakes, depending on how your preferences are set. If rules are changed midstream, Altium’s sophisticated Design Rule Checker can highlight violations based on the revised rules, and report Read Article

Understanding Your PCB Netlist

Understanding Your PCB Netlist File Understanding Your PCB Netlist File There are several different ways that PCB netlists are used at various stages of the electronics development process. Netlists may have different purposes and may have unique data formats, but they all provide a similar function; they list the connections of an electronic circuit. This is important for a variety of fundamental tasks in electronics and PCB layout design. Your PCB netlist file is used graphically Read Article

Getting Connected: Altium’s User Community Forums

Getting Connected: Altium’s User Community Forums The Altium design environment is a complex and sophisticated set of software tools. Not surprisingly, becoming proficient with these tools will take some time, and you’ll need to practice every step of the design process from beginning to end. So what happens if you get stuck along the way? The online documentation includes a “Getting Started” tutorial and a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list, and Altium also has a customer support system to Read Article

Getting Started in Altium Designer: The Schematic

Getting Started in Altium Designer: The Schematic A schematic is a way to record an idea. Schematics are drawings or diagrams that are used to communicate electronic ideas to others. You may have never thought about it, but anyone who understands electronics can look at your schematic and understand your idea, no matter what language they speak! Schematics are a universal “language” for recording and sharing electronic ideas. Here’s the official definition from IPC-T-50 (Terms and Definitions) Read Article

Nothing’s Perfect: Tolerance and the IPC

PCB Dimensions: Tolerance and the IPC Here's where we boldly confront a grim reality - nothing is perfect in the real world. We do our best to maintain accuracy in our circuit board designs, but the manufacturing process produces imperfections. Our CAD systems assume a drill is perfectly centered in a round pad. It never is. We declare specific trace widths, and when we measure them on an actual board they are always slightly thinner or thicker than expected. Multiple layers are Read Article