John Watson on the Importance of not Making Assumptions

Created: January 3, 2019
Updated: March 16, 2020

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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

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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

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