About Author

John Watson

With nearly 40 years in the Electronic industry with 20 of them being in the field of PCB Design and engineering, John has stayed on the cutting edge of the PCB industry as a designer/Engineer and more recently as a trainer and mentor. His primary work has been in the Manufacturing field but it has also expanded to several PCB Service arenas. As a veteran, he proudly served in the Army in the Military Intelligence field. John is a CID Certified PCB designer. Presently pursuing his Advance CID certification. Now as the Senior PCB engineer at Legrand Inc, he leads the PCB Designers and Engineers in various divisions across the United States and China.

Recent Articles

Coping with Design Challenges with an Intellegent Component Library - AltiumLive 2022 John Watson will demonstrate how to structure your component library for maximum product design efficiency. Watch Video

Navigating PCB Footprint Landmines

Navigating PCB Footprint Landmines Altium Concord Pro™ as a standalone product and brand name has been discontinued and the capabilities are now available as part of our Altium enterprise solutions. Learn more here . Introduction “How did this happen?” was the question that everyone was asking. We had just got back from the Assembly House, a new PCBA , and I knew by the adverse reaction that something had gone wrong. I know for most reading this, this scenario doesn’t happen to Read Article

Component Library Structure

Component Library Structure Learn the roles, permissions, component revisions, and lifecycles of our Component Library. It's essential to have them in place now rather than later because it's difficult to change them once you begin to actually start with coponents! Read Article

Building the Library - Unified Data Model

Building the Library - Unified Data Model Altium Concord Pro™ as a standalone product and brand name has been discontinued and the capabilities are now available as part of our Altium enterprise solutions. Learn more here . Introduction This may come as a shock to some, but I was raised on a farm back in Pennsylvania. Every spring, we would prepare for the planting season. It was amazing to me to take the seeds, plant them in the field, tend them, and in time end up with a crop. Within Read Article

Setting Up Concord Pro Revisions and Lifecycle

Setting Up Concord Pro Revisions and Lifecycle Altium Concord Pro™ as a standalone product and brand name has been discontinued and the capabilities are now available as part of our Altium enterprise solutions. Learn more here . Precursor To help PCB Designers to become better at what they do, there are various Blog series on Concord Pro which are presented in such a way that they are first broken into by categories. These categories walk through the entire process of efficiently using Read Article

Working with Design Variants

Working with Design Variants Introduction They say variety is the spice of life. That is also the case for PCB designs. It may come as a shock to some, but many companies are in business and always chasing this thing called “profits” (I am using my sarcastic voice). It is entirely understandable that profit is what keeps the doors open and people employed. A significant way that they improve the bottom line is to have a variety of product lines available to their customers Read Article

Why you should be using Concord Pro?

Why You Should Be Using Concord Pro Altium Concord Pro™ as a standalone product and brand name has been discontinued and the capabilities are now available as part of our Altium enterprise solutions. Learn more here . Introduction A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, or so the aphorism goes. I think it’s worth noting that the first step is the most difficult to take. In my experience, the best engineers suffer from a condition in which they, before even taking Read Article

Setting Up Concord Pro- Roles and Permissions

Setting Up Concord Pro- Roles and Permissions Altium Concord Pro™ as a standalone product and brand name has been discontinued and the capabilities are now available as part of our Altium enterprise solutions. Learn more here . Precursor To help PCB Designers to become better at what they do, the series of Blogs on Concord Pro are broken down by category. Each category walks through the entire process of setting up and efficiently using Concord Pro. Furthermore, at the end of each blog are Read Article

Concord Pro and ECAD to MCAD Integration

Concord Pro and ECAD to MCAD Integration Altium Concord Pro^™ as a standalone product and brand name has been discontinued and the capabilities are now available as part of our Altium enterprise solutions. Learn more here . Introduction Back in September, I did a blog called PCB Design is a Team Sport , in which I specifically examined the different roles involved in the PCB Design Process. One of my conclusions was that the most important role involved in the whole design process is the Read Article

AltiumLive 2019 is on the Books

AltiumLive 2019 is on the Books The Robot Building Competition. First picture: Team 15 with Judy Warner and Industry Expert, Sven Ingelfinger. Second picture: Winning team of The Battle of The Robots in AltiumLive 2019 Europe. Source: Linkedin Here I find myself sitting in the departure terminal of the Frankfurt Airport, heading back home to San Diego after completing another successful AltiumLive event. I have had the great pleasure of participating in this event since they Read Article

Assuring Design Coherence in a PCB

Assuring Design Coherence in a PCB Introduction There is a saying “that it’s not how you start that is important, but rather how you finish.” Which is perfectly ok when you are talking about sports and you get off to a bad start need to recover in the second half. However, when it comes to PCB design, it’s not a very good practice. If things start badly, they usually don’t recover, and it continues down the same path—which ends up costing more money and lost design time. At one Read Article

Concord Pro and Component Creation

Concord Pro and Component Creation Altium Concord Pro^™ as a standalone product and brand name has been discontinued and the capabilities are now available as part of our Altium enterprise solutions. Learn more here . Introduction First off, before I say anything, the more that I have been using Altium Concord Pro ^™, the more I like it. In fact, I love it. Altium has surprised me many times with the quality of the tools they put out. A few examples: Draftsman^® , ACTIVEBOM^® or Read Article

Advancements in Electronic Component Management

Advancements in Electronic Component Management In this volatile business of ours, we can ill afford to rest on our laurels, even to pause in retrospect. Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future. - Walt Disney I stood at the large hospital window looking out at the early evening sky. I could see several stories below just a small section of the nearby freeway. As typical for the late hour, the traffic was at a standstill, with its Read Article

Concord Pro and the Library S.M.A.R.T. Rule Part-2

Concord Pro and the Library S.M.A.R.T. Rule Part-2 Altium Concord Pro^™ as a standalone product and brand name has been discontinued and the capabilities are now available as part of our Altium enterprise solutions. Learn more here . Introduction In the first part of this blog , we saw how you could use Concord Pro^® to set up and support the S.M.A.R.T. Rule of Data Management , specifically the Singularity and the Management of your data. Now, we will continue to look at the additional pillars Read Article

Concord Pro and the Library S.M.A.R.T. Rule Part-1

Concord Pro and the Library S.M.A.R.T. Rule Part-1 \ Altium Concord Pro^™ as a standalone product and brand name has been discontinued and the capabilities are now available as part of our Altium enterprise solutions. Learn more here . Introduction The saying goes that “The lead dog always has the best view.” When it comes to the race of the ECAD Software companies, for many years, Altium has led the pack. They got to that prized position for several reasons.The main reason, I believe, is that Read Article

Naming Convention and PCB Data Management

Naming Convention and PCB Data Management Introduction There is a poem by John Godfrey Saxe that was from a Hindu fable about the six blind men of Indostan who went to see the Elephant. The first went up and felt the side of the Elephant and concluded that he was touching a wall. The second went up and felt a tusk, exclaimed: “This is not a wall at all; it is a spear.” The third blind man, feeling the huge trunk, decided that it was a snake. The fourth man felt the elephant’s leg and Read Article

AltiumLive Why You Should Be There

AltiumLive Why You Should Be There October of 2019 will mark the third year since Altium kicked off what’s become one of the most exciting PCB Design Conventions around. 2017 is when I first heard that Altium was going to conduct what at that time was a two-day convention and that it was in conjunction with the release of Altium 18—which anyone who works with Altium knows was a significant upgrade and improvement in the software. I thought all this was going to be a never-ending Read Article