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The most powerful, modern and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use

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PCB Design

Read the latest information PCB Design from the industry's leading experts.

PCB Layout Constraints That Help Manage Component Obsolescence Just about everyone in the world of engineering has heard some variation of the “Iron Triangle” theory. It’s a popular way to talk about what is or isn’t possible among those given the task of getting things done. Basically, it is a philosophy that says you can get something done fast, cheap, or good; pick two. For example, when designing a PCB for an aircraft, cheap goes out the window, fast takes a back seat and quality is paramount Read Article

Using Flyback Diodes in Relays Prevents Electrical Noise in Your Circuits Engineers sometimes have the tendency to over complicate a problem instead of focusing on simple logical solutions. For example, my friend’s motorcycle broke down and he spent hours checking on the battery, carburetor and the electrical system. It turns out that this was all done in vain. We were pretty amused to find out that this mayhem was caused by a faulty fuel indicator that let his fuel tank run empty. In electronics, what might seem like Read Article

Why Designing a High Voltage PCB for Rapid Prototyping Is More Effective Than Rushing to Form Factor Remember that fable we all were told as kids about the tortoise and the hare? The moral of the story was that slow and steady wins the race. In engineering, this is especially true when it comes to creating a consumer product quickly. However, this practice is rarely the approach we take. I personally experienced this when I rushed the design of a dimmer for the IOT market. In fact, I was making two dimmers. The first dimmer was simpler and used Read Article

High Speed Design Techniques: Schematic Considerations With my apologies to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein for borrowing their lyrics, “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…” In this case, however, we are going to be looking at high frequency and high speed PCB design techniques instead of a Hollywood musical, and the beginning happens to be the schematic. You may argue that the place to start would be on the ground plane itself. Board materials, layer stackup planning Read Article

How To Design Internet Of Things Devices: Make Them Simple and Universal Greed is a natural human tendency that promises much but often leaves us with nothing. My father grew up in a gold rich area of Africa. A miner once told my father and his friends that they could keep as much of his gold as they could carry by hand for 5 miles. My father and his friends each took their turns, but all of them tried to carry too much and couldn’t even make it one mile. The temptation to attempt too much, or keep too much to oneself Read Article

How to Prevent Silkscreen Placement Errors in PCB Manufacturing: PCB Design Tips & Tricks - Altium Audio Bites Altium Audio Bites, giving you bite-sized information that's easy to digest and apply to your everyday design tasks. From our PCB Design Tips & Tricks audio series here is: How To Prevent Silkscreen Placement Errors in PCB Manufacturing. All our audio series are from real PCB designers in the field, detailing their day to day problems and experiences. We hope you can learn from this as much as we have. Give it a listen and let us know what you Read Article

High Speed PCB Design Guidelines: An Overview for Getting Started No matter where you are in your career as a PCB , if you haven’t had an opportunity to work with high speed pcb design guidelines yet then you may be in for a surprise. There is a lot to consider when you start working in high speed. Most of the techniques you will need to learn are an expansion of the basic board design rules and methods that you are already familiar with. However, you will also find that there are different ways to approach Read Article

How to Optimize Your Design for Product Serviceability Have you ever gone into a situation thinking that you’re totally prepared, only to come out of it feeling like you are totally clueless? Unfortunately, I have experienced this more times than I would like to recount. This was especially the case when I started designing products for serviceability or design for repair. There are many factors to consider before you decide whether your product should be designed for serviceability, and you should Read Article

The SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition: Growing the Next Generation of Electronics Designers In 2013, when Elon Musk unveiled the concept of the Hyperloop as a future form of transportation, he immediately challenged private industry and universities from around the world to develop the technology and pods. (After all, he has his hands full these days!) Since that time, SpaceX has hosted two Hyperloop pod competitions consisting of university teams at their headquarters in Torrance, CA. These events afford three lucky teams the chance to Read Article

PCB Design Guidelines for Designing Solar Powered Embedded Systems Have you ever gone on a vacation and felt like you needed another one immediately after? I sure do, my last beach holiday was completely ruined by constant thunderstorms. Unpredictable weather always is always a dilemma when I’m planning ahead for my next vacation, especially if it involves outdoor activities. I take the same cautious approach when I’m designing solar-powered embedded systems intended for outdoor applications. It is a totally Read Article

How to Find the Best PCB Layout Help for Your Specific Design Questions Have you ever heard stories about the gamblers in the Wild West pulling an ace out of their sleeve in order to cash in with the winning hand? Even though it’s not the most moral example I’ve ever used, the principle here is still a good one. Always make sure that you have something in your pocket that you can draw from when you need it. And this is just as important for us as designers as it is in everyday life. At some point, everyone needs help Read Article

High Voltage PCB Design for Arc Prevention: How to Manage Pads and Traces Growing up, I’d work obsessively on jigsaw puzzles with my grandmother. Like, skipping dinner obsessively. She was a grandmaster of puzzles; you only got to look at the picture once when you took the pieces out. If you needed more than your memory and pattern recognition, that was cheating. Instead of facing the shame of looking at the box, I learned to focus on the shapes of the pieces, and how each fit with its neighbors. That way, not knowing Read Article

How to Reduce Power Consumption in Embedded Systems With Deep Sleep SRAM Editorial credit: DFree / Shutterstock.com One of my favorite musical groups is the French DJ duo Daft Punk. One of the quirks of Daft Punk is that they pretend to be robots and perform all their shows in awesome robot costumes. In 2013 they released their album Random Access Memories, or RAM, to play on the robotic theme. However, they failed to specify exactly which kind of RAM. You and I know that in the world of embedded systems the type of Read Article

3D PCB Design: Why You Need It and How It Will Help You The other day I watched as a young father was entertaining his one-year old son on his shoulders. Securely held by his dad, the boy would constantly move from side trying to get different views of his father. In an overload of cuteness, he would first look at his dad over the left side of his face, then play with his hair, move over to the right side, then go back to where he started from. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this precious moment, but Read Article

Are Fiducial Marker Placements on PCBs Still Necessary with Modern Manufacturing Capabilities? About 10 years ago, I stopped watching horror movies. In my younger days I really enjoyed being scared silly, but when I started my engineering career I became more interested in action and sci-fi genres. This is likely because I was getting my fair share of horror stories at work when simple mistakes resulted in catastrophic post-production nightmares. Sign up and try Altium Designer today. When I started my electronics design career, through Read Article

SpaceX’s Hyperloop Pod Competition: The Pod Flight Heard Around the World Judy Warner and Benjamin Kitzinger of Altium If I had any question I am a total geek, all doubt was dispelled yesterday when I entered the gates to the Hyperloop Pod Competition II held at SpaceX headquarters in Torrance, California. I felt exactly like a giddy 8-year-old clearing the turnstile at Disneyland for the first time. Then, when the WARR Hyperloop team set the new pod world speed record, at 324 km/h (just over 200 mph), I nearly Read Article

Why You Should Use PCB Assembly Variants for Multiple Design Configurations Years ago I was working on a design that had been copied from an existing board, but there was a problem. A few of the circuits on my layout didn’t match what the engineer had in his schematic. This generated a lot of confusion. We eventually tracked the problem down to some edits that had been made to the board after the design had been approved and sent to fabrication. An inadvertent change to the board while creating an assembly variation had Read Article