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PCB Design

Announcements: Techdocs - a new era for Altium’s technical documentation

Announcements: Techdocs - a new era for Altium’s technical documentation In conjunction with the release of Altium Designer^®, Altium is pleased to herald the arrival of a new home for its technical documentation - techdocs.altium.com. This represents a significant milestone for Altium and kicks off the start of a campaign to ultimately get our documentation ‘house’ in order - and then some! It reflects our strong commitment to a singular overriding quest, and that is to provide high-quality, highly-relevant and Read Article

AdminConsole - creating a new way to manage your relationship with Altium

AdminConsole - creating a new way to manage your relationship with Altium When I was first presented with the idea of creating a marketplace where electronic designers could trade and reuse hardware and software designs, scripts or tutorials, and collaborate and exchange their valuable IP, it sounded like a pretty daunting task and a little overwhelming. When I was first presented with the idea of creating a marketplace where electronic designers could trade and reuse hardware and software designs, scripts or tutorials Read Article

What's the best way to make a library searchable? Parameters - Component Development Part 3

What's the best way to make a library searchable? Parameters - Component Development Part 3 It's one thing to make great components, but it's quite another to make them easy to find. With reusable components, ui component, software engineering and various component based development, things can be complicated to hunt down. In this blog I explain how we handle component parameters, why they are important, and how we kick off our component development process. Looking at the discussion spawned from my first two blogs, I’ve a feeling this Read Article

Creating a custom Altium pick and place file

Creating a custom Altium pick and place file I recently worked with a customer who had to generate a nonstandard pick and place file because his assembly house was using antiquated equipment and could not accept a standard Altium pick and place file. I thought it might be helpful to show how to use the Bill of Material generator within Altium Designer^® to create a custom report to meet such needs. I recently worked with a customer who had to generate a nonstandard pick and place file Read Article

AltiumLive just got even better

AltiumLive just got even better Today I am excited to share the details of the next major release to AltiumLive. We are introducing a few new features including: your personal Wall, Dashboard - providing your administrator with a view of your organization - and the Content Store, which is a section dedicated to the growing list of content and Altium Designer^® updates that are available. The Forums, BugCrunch and the Blogs that you have grown to enjoy, are still available and Read Article

Taking Vaults forward together

Taking Vaults forward together Following the recent initial release of Altium Vaults our efforts are now concentrated on fostering large scale adoption. Enhancements will focus on technology maturity, efficiency improvements, and adaptability to a wider range of organization profiles. The next update initiates this second phase by delivering key improvements in the domains of supply chain management, design reuse and enterprise systems integration. Community contribution is Read Article

Power Nets Management: Circuit Board Best Practices

Power Nets Management: Circuit Board Best Practices A recent BugCrunch item (Power input vs output) raised the long standing issue of power management in Altium Designer^®. PCB fabrication can be a complicated process when considering all of the items that go into it. Between the vias, solder mask, and solder, things can get messy. To ensure we are all on the same page, I have some opinions on PCB assembly before work gets started. As always, I will be very interested in your thoughts and comments Read Article

The Hateful Five of PCB Manufacturing

The Hateful Five of PCB Manufacturing You just completed your last design review, got that needed approval signature, and the finish line has never been closer, or so you think. Even after your components are sourced and your board is laid out perfectly, the biggest challenge is yet to come - ensuring that all those months of design and team effort don’t go to waste when it comes time to communicate design intent to manufacturing. But how do you navigate this stage of your post Read Article

The Real Costs of Failed Design Collaboration

The Real Costs of Failed Design Collaboration Our design processes have failed us. All over the world, engineers are struggling every day with the simple process of communication between electrical and mechanical design teams. What plagues us is not the lack of power in our tools, but their inability to adapt to what is an entirely different product design workflow than what was required a decade ago. Our design processes have failed us. All over the world, engineers are struggling every day Read Article

New PDN Analysis Extension Now Available for Altium Designer

New PDN Analysis Extension Now Available for Altium Designer Read about a new extension for Altium Designer^® that allows you to efficiently optimize your at design time. With digital designs continuing to increase in density and complexity, it’s more difficult and critical than ever to fully understand the impact of design decisions on your Power Distribution Network () voltage and current performance. Rather than treating issues as a post-design afterthought in a physical prototype, you need a way to Read Article

DC Analysis of a PDN: Essential for the Digital Designer

DC Analysis of a PDN: Essential for the Digital Designer As PCBs become increasingly miniaturized, engineers are commonly faced with incorporating multiple power planes on the same layer. While this design practice introduces coupling issues, the real question is whether they can be resolved without a dedicated PDN analysis tool. Read on to find out. DC Analysis of a PDN: Essential for the Digital Designer Is there enough copper? DC analysis of a power delivery network (“PDN”), commonly referred to as Read Article

How to Make History, One Rocket at a Time

How to Make History, One Rocket at a Time As we celebrate SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft making history and achieving what was widely discounted as impossible just few years ago, we know that all that effort didn't come from a void, but rather from hard work, innovation, dedication, and of course utilizing the right tools to manage all the phases of their designs from the various disciplines. As my old man used to say - if you fail, keep trying until you make history (maybe not his exact Read Article

Altium Vault Primer Part 1: Making the Case for Centralized Data Management

Altium Vault Primer Part 1: Making the Case for Centralized Data Management Altium Vault^® is an invaluable resource to PCB designers, allowing your teams to store and share a vast array of projects and components and access them instantly whenever needed. But before we dive into the specifics of the Altium in our Primer series, we need to look at how your design team can benefit from a centralized data management solution. Altium is an invaluable resource to PCB designers, allowing your teams to store and share a vast Read Article

Altium Designer 16.1 Now Available

Altium Designer 16.1 Now Available Altium ^® 16.1 is now available to all Altium Subscription customers. Altium Designer^® 16.1 Now Available Altium 16.1 is here, and it’s better than ever! This release is available now as a free upgrade to all Altium Subscription customers and can be downloaded on the Altium Downloads page. Not an Altium Subscription customer? Contact our support team to upgrade. In this release, we’ve packed in powerful technology to automate your documentation Read Article

Altium Vault Primer - Data Management from 10,000 Feet

Altium Vault Primer - At 10,000 Feet: Project and Data Management Does the prospect of managing all of your design data overwhelm you? If so, you aren’t alone. The real question is what you can do about it. Read on to learn how to take the guesswork out of your data management workflow. Altium Vault^® Primer - Data Management from 10,000 Feet Does the prospect of managing all of your design data overwhelm you? That’s how I felt every day back in my engineering days. I had a great team of designers, all solid Read Article

Battling Your Power and Data Transmission Demands

Battling Your Power and Data Transmission Demands As an industry, we have approached the increased power consumption and data transmission requirements differently depending on the application of our devices and peripherals. Wouldn’t it be great to have a simplified solution that everyone could use? Do your designs invariably require more components as you struggle to maintain an elegant design? As we seek to expand the capabilities of our devices, the arduous task of keeping our board designs Read Article

The Top Two File Format Alternatives to Replace Gerber RS-274X

The Top Two File Format Alternatives to Replace Gerber RS-274X Despite its popular use in about 90% of all PCBs designed worldwide, Gerber RS-274X has several practical limitations that can lead to a number of problems during your fabrication process. What are the alternatives to this file format? Read on to find out. Meta Description: Although Gerber RS-274X is used in about 90% of all PCB designs it has several practical limitations. Gerber RS-274X is the de facto standard for PCB design software, but that Read Article