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How to Adopt Signal Integrity Analysis in Your High-Speed Design Process

How to Adopt Signal Integrity Analysis in Your High-Speed Design Process As our designs become more complicated, the risk of signal integrity issues increases. Adopting signal integrity simulation in your design process can mitigate risks and preserve resources. Read to learn more. The way signals operate in reality is often very different from the theoretical applications taught in universities, and as a consequence, moving from theory to practical application can often lead to unpredictable results. A signal can be Read Article

Backdrill it Baby - How to Reduce Signal Distortions on Your PCB

Backdrill it Baby - How to Reduce Signal Distortions on Your PCB Over the years, engineers have developed several approaches to deal with noises that can distort high speed digital signal integrity in printed circuit board backdrill designs. And as our designs push new boundaries, so does the complexity of our techniques to cope with new challenges. Today, the speed of digital design systems is in the GHz, a speed that creates more prominent challenges than the past. And with edge rates at the picoseconds, any Read Article

The Transition of Transistors

The Transition of Transistors: A Transistor History Timeline Even if you’re not an electrical engineer, chances are you still love technology and all it offers, whether it be for work or pleasure. We all get caught up in the buzz when a new processor comes out and hear things like how Intel is using a 14nm (nanometer) technology and has over a billion graphene transistors. But what exactly is this technology and for what device? Back to the Basics As complicated as the world of engineering can be Read Article

To Autoroute or Not to Autoroute-A History of Failed Design Automation

Autorouting, or No Autorouting? A History of Failed Design Automation Learn about the complete history of EDA design automation and the evolution of PCB autorouting technology from the 1980s to today. Welcome to the world of electronics. It’s 2016, and we’re now seeing more technological sophistication than in any other period in human history. Just this year alone autonomous vehicles have began their introduction into the public sphere, rockets are being re-landed from space for reuse with finely tuned precision Read Article

How to Save Time Managing Your Component Libraries

How to Save Time Managing Your Component Libraries Component management is a time-consuming and frustrating process that takes valuable time away from other important tasks, but what if there was a way to auto-fill the necessary information for your components? Read on to learn how Altium Vault^® mitigates the management process with the use of a component template. Let us take a look at a pattern library and our component definition. Perhaps one of the most tedious jobs in the ECAD world is Read Article

The Do’s and Don’ts of PCB Design

The Do’s and Don’ts of PCB Design How can you become a better PCB designer? You know all the basics of printed circuit boards, but you want to go beyond that. Accomplish truly great things, and take your place amongst the legends of what is PCB design. So what can you do? What is it that separates the best PCB design pros from everyone else, and what does it take to be like them? How can you become a better PCB designer? You know all the basics of printed circuit boards, but you Read Article

Is IPC-2152 Holding Your Power Integrity Back?

Is IPC-2152 Holding Your Power Integrity Back? For most designers, the Power Distribution Network (PDN) is a foreign and intimidating part of the PCB design process. But achieving optimal PDN performance is not as complicated as it seems. For many designers, the Power Distribution Network (PDN) is a foreign and intimidating part of the PCB design process. But achieving optimal PDN performance is not as complicated as it seems. In fact, the fundamental goal of optimizing your PDN can be as Read Article

Electronification of the World, One Wearable at a Time

Electronification of the World, One Wearable at a Time As the world of electronic manufacturing shifts into the eras of Industry 4.0, IoT, and Big Data, it’s becoming more important than ever for companies to embrace software platforms to remain competitive. This process has never been more challenging when you factor in other competing goals including reducing time to market, increasing quality and efficiency, and optimizing your entire value chain. What’s driving this transformation where today’s Read Article

How to Automate Your High-Speed Design Process

How to Automate Your High-Speed Design Process Keeping track of individual segment lengths for nets, via depths, or pin lengths in a spreadsheet can be burdensome. Learn how to automate your high-speed design process with new technology in Altium Designer^®. High Speed design is one of the most challenging tasks that an electrical engineer can take on. There are any number of factors that can affect the way a high speed signal will respond. A misconception is that High Speed Design is a Read Article

The Worst Advice We’ve Heard About PCB Design

Really Bad PCB Design Advice to Not Follow At Altium Designer, we’ve been in the PCB design software business for over 30 years. In that time, we’ve seen a lot of innovations—and a lot of mistakes. It seems every engineer has some PCB design basics advice to offer on laying out a printed circuit board, and unfortunately not all of it is good. Here’s a roundup of some of the worst PCB design advice we’ve heard. Avoid Via in Pad At first glance, this seems like sound PCB design basics Read Article

How to Simplify and Automate Your PCB ECO Workflow

Automating PCB Design Environments: How to Simplify and Automate Your PCB ECO Workflow Shuffling different programs for your schematic and PCB layout design changes costs both time and money. Altium Designer^® tackles this issue with a unified design system that automatically transfers data between schematic and PCB using component links. Read on to learn how component links are increasing productivity by automating ECO procedures. Transferring data from schematic to PCB, or vice versa, is traditionally a task stretched across Read Article

The Biggest PCB Manufacturing Trends We’ve Seen This Year

The Biggest PCB Manufacturing Trends We’ve Seen This Year The field of new technology in PCB manufacturing is constantly evolving. Technology is improving, new innovations are being made, and better manufacturing methods are being developed. Methods that were commonplace yesterday may today be obsolete. How can you keep up? Well, here are some of the PCB manufacturing trends we’ve seen in 2016 so far. The field of PCB Manufacturing is constantly evolving. Technology is improving, new assembly Read Article

The Peak of Engineering Efficiency is Now Available in Altium Designer 17

The Peak of Engineering Efficiency is Now Available in Altium Designer 17 The Peak of Engineering Efficiency and PCB Design Technology is Now Available in Altium 17 The engineering mentality is one focused on efficiency and creativity. And whether you’re designing electronics in today’s autonomous vehicles or connected devices, the careful balance between art and science walks a very thin line. Sooner or later, you’re bound to hit a roadblock. Not in your ideas, but in executing those ideas efficiently in your tools Read Article

7 Common Misconceptions about PCB Design

7 Common Misconceptions about PCB Design After years of PCB assembly, you probably know about a decoupling capacitor, a solder mask, and schematic symbols like the back of your hand. Right? Brace yourself. We’re about to challenge everything you ever thought you knew about printed circuit board design. Well, maybe not everything. Seven things. Everyone holds to certain misconceptions when designing: things they’ve been taught, things they heard, things they learned firsthand (right Read Article

How to Easily Import Your Designs to Your Favorite Design Tools

How to Easily Import Your Designs to Your Favorite Design Tools One task that has always proven difficult is moving electronic product designs from one printed board design software environment to another. Whether you’ve changed PCB design tools or acquired designs from another company, there are a number of challenges involved in moving a project from one PCB software platform to another, while maintaining design consistency. It’s a difficult and time-consuming process, but it has to be done. Say a PCB has Read Article

How to Automate Your Design Review Process

How to Automate Your Design Review Workflow and Process Your typical design review workflow can be filled with endless hurdles, errors, and time-consuming processes without the right tools, but it doesn’t have to be. Learn how you can automate your design review and comparison process in Altium Designer^®. The increasing demand for smaller, more capable electronics has been a major driving factor behind the development of more complex, densely packed PCBs. Although EDA software is regularly updated to Read Article

Personalizing Your Altium Designer Experience

Personalizing Your Altium Designer Experience The “one-stop-shop” approach to electronics design provides engineers with all the PCB software they need, all at their fingertips. However, since there’s so much going on in the Altium Designer^® package, it can get overwhelming. How can you manage this plethora of functionality effectively? Modern PCB design software employ an ever growing collection of features and functionality. One of the leaders in this area is Altium, which provides users Read Article