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Altium Designer Quick-Start Tutorial Part 1 Altium Designer Quick-Start Tutorial Part 1 Learn how to design a simple, two-layer PCB in Altium Designer all the way from project creation, schematic capture, PCB design, to generating manufacturing files. A great place to start if you haven’t used Altium Designer or any ECAD tool before. Read Article
Non-functional Pads PCB How Non-functional Pads Affect Your PCB Design Non-functional pads are sometimes framed as an all-or-nothing debate, and the debates about reliability and effects on signal integrity abound. Should you keep them on your vias, or should you remove them from all vias? Like any design decision there are tradeoffs to balance, and typically one aspect of a design will take precedence over all others. Because there is no generalized rule about the use of non-functional pads, designers should Read Article
How to Select the Best Surface Finish for your PCB How to Select the Best Surface Finish for your PCB Dr, Kunal generously gives us all a crash course on surface finishes and understanding different types of materials that could affect signal integrity, reliability and electronic shelf life. Read Article
The Newest Feature Upgrades in Altium Designer 22.7 The Newest Feature Upgrades in Altium Designer 22.7 August 26, 2022 ONTRACK BI-WEEKLY New This Month in Altium Designer Altium Designer 22.7 offers new schematic and layout features that help you supercharge your design experience. This newest announcement focuses on three productivity features in variants, the PCB Editor, and the Schematic Editor: Support For Paste Mask in Variants - Need to change paste mask expansion in a PCBA variant? Altium Designer now gives you the control to specify this Read Article
hybrid beamforming What is Hybrid Beamforming? Beamforming is an important broadcast method that involves use of antenna arrays in a wireless system to transmit electromagnetic energy along a specific direction. More wireless systems are expanding their ability to handle multiple users (or targets) with beamforming and MIMO. This is already used in radar, WiFi, and in newer high-bandwidth communication systems (5G). For the systems designer, it is important to understand the layout Read Article
High-Speed PCB Design Analysis High-Speed PCB Design Analysis: Simulations and Signal Integrity Checks High speed PCB design analysis is an admittedly broad area, comprising basic calculations of important design details, as well as simulations to verify a PCB layout. Some important evaluations are performed in the schematic, or at the very beginning of a design when a layout is being planned. These analysis techniques also have different levels of difficulty or advancement, and they will sometimes require an external program to fully evaluate the Read Article
How to Select Copper Foil How to Select Copper Foil for High-Frequency PCB Design Learn how to choose the right kind of copper foil for your high frequency PCB stackup. The same ideas apply to selection of copper for high-speed PCBs. Read Article
Come See the Upgrades in Altium Designer 22.7 Come See the Upgrades in Altium Designer 22.7 August 12, 2022 ONTRACK BI-WEEKLY New This Month in Altium Designer Take control of your design workflow in Altium Designer 22.7 with new commenting and repository management features. This newest announcement focuses on new commenting and secure repository connection upgrades: Comments & Tasks for Draftsman - The project commenting features now extend into Draftsman documents. All comments in a Draftsman document will be available through a Read Article
What is in the PCB Bill? What is in the PCB Bill? In this episode, Representative Moore, one of the co-sponsors of H.R.7677, the Supporting American Printed Circuit Boards Act of 2022, will give us brief but insightful details about the bill. Read Article
Altium Digital Transformation The Last Mile of Digital Transformation Made Easy We live in an era fueled by innovation. In almost every aspect of our lives, we are constantly being reminded about the pace of innovation, its relentless acceleration touted in the news, its benefit on our lives, and the lifestyles our gadgets enable. For those of us whose business is electronic product design, the impacts of rapid innovation, changing market conditions, and customer expectations also permeate every aspect of our working Read Article
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