How Do You Get Started on a New CAD Tool?

Created: August 28, 2018
Updated: March 16, 2020

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Your Guide to Transmission Line Losses in Electrical Systems Learn everything you’ve wanted to know about transmission line losses and how to analyze them on your PCB. Read Article

Designing for Multiple PCBs in the Same Project Majority of our PCB designs sit as a single PCB under our Altium Designer projects (i.e. .PrjPcb file). Now and then, we design using variants with different stuffing options. It seldom happens that we have a single project that requires multiple PCBs with various stuffing options, but when it happens, a lot of us tend to get stuck. All too many times, I have seen designers fork (i.e., copy and paste) a project and then add slight variations to Read Article

Leveraging the Free Footprint Community to Design at Lightning Speed One of the biggest hurdles individuals and startups face with creating new PCB designs is footprint creation. Designing footprints is a job most people hate. It’s tedious, time consuming, and doesn’t result in much except, well, a footprint. Companies now realize this pain point and offering designers free, well-designed PCB footprints. Why would they spend their time doing this? Imagine Company A sells a connector for $5.00, but no footprint is Read Article

Configuring a Hardware in the Loop Project This article will walk through an example project of a board designed in Altium Designer and run through a DevOps flow using hardware in the loop testing against its firmware. Read Article

Designing 5G Devices The next stage in the evolution of mobile telephony is here with the roll-out of 5G. The designer looking to incorporate functionality to handle 5G signals into their circuits will face some challenging issues. So, what’s so special about 5G. The main change in the jump from 4G to 5G is the frequency band at which signals are transmitted. For 4G, this band covered 0.7 GHz up to 2.5 GHz. For 5G, this new band is an order of magnitude larger, with Read Article

The Digital Engineer's Guide to RF PCB Layout and Routing Read our guide to learn some best practices for RF PCB layout and routing. We’ll also look at how simulation tools can help you evaluate your RF PCB layout. Read Article

Continuous Conduction Mode in an SMPS: What is it and Why it Matters Learn more about continuous conduction mode and how to design to this condition in your power supply. The best design and simulation tools can help you verify continuous conduction mode is reached. Read Article

Serial Communications Protocols - Part Four: RS-485 This article is from a series of articles looking at some of the popular Serial Communication Protocols. These will cover a few of the more popular protocols and standards in use today. After this series, we will review and compare their advantages and disadvantages. We aim to provide helpful information that you can cross-reference next time you need to choose the best serial communication bus for your design. In this article, we will be looking Read Article

Parameterized Tests Using Pytest for Hardware in the Loop Testing In Configuring a Hardware in the Loop Project, we reviewed the hardware concept in the loop testing using the Pytest framework. In that article, we examined the high-level concepts needed to create a basic test framework and structure. In this article, we will be reviewing the Pytest framework in-depth, specifically parameterized tests. At the end of this article, the reader will understand the difference between individual tests and Read Article

ECAD-MCAD Collaboration for Improved Product Development Working between the Electronic and Mechanical design domains brings unique challenges. ECAD and MCAD tools have different design objectives and Watch Video

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