Easy, Powerful, Modern

The world’s most trusted PCB design system.

Learn More

PCB Design

Flex PCB materials

Introduction to Flex PCB Materials Learn how to properly select flex PCB materials for accommodating rigid-flex designs and how choosing the right flex circuit materials helps mitigate field failures. Read Article

Parts Insights, Manufacturing, and more from AltiumLive!

Parts Insights, Manufacturing, and more from AltiumLive! During AltiumLive 2022 CONNECT, we announced Altimade, developed in partnership with MacroFab. Altimade provides a cloud-based solution for releasing projects to manufacturing in MacroFab’s network of North America factories via the Altium 365 platform. Read Article

PCB layer stackup

Communicating PCB Layer Stackup Needs to Manufacturers With software-based stackup planning tools, you can quickly communicate PCB layer stackup needs to manufacturers. Read Article

Learn PCB Design

Considering Electronics as a Career? You'll Need to Learn PCB Design! Students who want to learn PCB design can find free resources from Altium Education, the industry’s leading educational platform for college students to learn PCB design. Read Article

PCB Design Course

Why PCB Design Courses Are Essential in an Engineering Curriculum A PCB design course nicely fits into standard electrical engineering curricula and complements existing coursework with systems-level design concepts. Read Article

EnviroSense WiFi Weather Station Multiboard Design

Ebook: EnviroSense Multi-board Project Create your own WI-Fi weather station. Follow along offline by downloading this latest project by Mark Harris. Read Article

PCB Solder mask expansion

What Is Solder Mask Expansion and Which Value Should You Use? The solder stop mask layer caps off the PCB and provides a protective film over copper on the surface layers. Solder mask needs to be pulled back from landing pads on the surface layer so that you have a surface where components can be mounted and soldered. This removal of the solder mask from a pad on the top layer should extend some distance around the edge of the pad, creating either NSMD or SMD pads for your components. How far back should Read Article

Transmission Line Impedance Calculator

PCB Transmission Line Impedance Calculators We’ve compiled a set of transmission line impedance calculators for use in high speed PCB design and RF design. Read Article

Electronics Supply Chain Sentiment Indicates a Gloomy 18 Months

Electronics Supply Chain Sentiment Indicates a Gloomy 18 Months The electronics supply chain is seeing record investment, yet engineers are still projecting longer lead times and higher prices for components. Read Article

Get the latest on the Altium Designer 22 release and more!

Get the latest on the Altium Designer 22 release and more! February 18, 2022 ONTRACK BI-WEEKLY The newest release of Altium Designer brings users new supply chain insights, DFM features, and additional simulation features in SPICE. The biggest enhancements in this newest release include: Simulation The SPICE simulation package in Altium Designer 22 now includes Monte Carlo. Results can be displayed in an easy-to-read histogram for sensitivity analysis. Assembly Solder paste settings have been improved to Read Article

Routing High Density Inteconnects with Reliable Microvias-Cover

Ebook: Routing High-Density Interconnects with Reliable Microvias Routing high density PCBs is heavily rules driven and it requires understanding what contributes to microvia reliability. Read Article

Parasitic capacitance

How to Reduce Parasitic Capacitance in a PCB Layout Learn how to reduce parasitic capacitance so you can prevent high-frequency noise coupling in your PCB layout. Read Article

Mode-Selective Transmission Line

Harness mmWave Routing with a Mode-Selective Transmission Line High frequency and data rate channels can be routed as a mode-selective transmission line. Here’s when you should consider this routing technique. Read Article

Using the Sun to Keep Your Clunker Happy

Using the Sun to Keep Your Clunker Happy A lot of folks have transitioned to working from home either part time or completely which means they sometimes leave their automobiles in the driveway for days or weeks at a time. I, for one, am definitely in this camp. I could easily go for weeks without starting my clunker which means, very frequently, my car battery will die. We usually combat this problem by periodically turning on our cars and drive around the block a few times. At the best Read Article

Thermal Management in PCB Today

Thermal Management in PCB Today Clearing up the confusion about the IPC 2152 with Mike Jouppi, the “Thermal Man''. Watch this episode and be enlightened about thermal management on PCB, which will be very useful to apply to your next PCB design project. Read Article

Parasitic Extraction with an Electromagnetic Solver in PCB Routing

Parasitic Extraction with an Electromagnetic Solver in PCB Routing Parasitic extraction: the integrated circuit design community must grapple with this task on a daily basis, especially once gate features are reduced below ~350 nm and chips run at high switching speeds. The PCB community also has to deal with this idea in order to better design power delivery networks, interconnects with precise impedance, and properly quantify crosstalk and coupling mechanisms. There are many 3rd party applications that can be Read Article

Part 4: Creating Fabrication and Assembly Drawings In Altium Designer

Part 4: Creating Fabrication and Assembly Drawings In Altium Designer Draftsman is a sophisticated yet easy to use drawing tool that is integrated within Altium Designer, for the creation of fabrication and assembly drawings. Draftsman is a built-in extension that can be installed or removed manually by going to the Extensions and Updates page. You can access the Extensions and Updates page by clicking on the user icon on the top right of the Altium Designer window. If you would like to skip to different chapters Read Article