PCB Design

Altium is paving the way for enhanced engineering by designing the next generation of tools unifying the PCB design industry. Whether you are looking for an easy to use drag and drop in browser PCB design software, how to get component data in real-time while designing a board, collaborative tools for systems engineers, interviews with industry pioneers, or the best PCB Design software, Altium has you covered! Read the latest information PCB Design from the industry's leading experts.

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End-to-End Tracking of Your PCB Design Have you ever run a board re-spin only to discover you’re not even sure what the changes were? I’m not talking about comparing GERBERs from Rev A to Rev B, rather I am referring to understanding the requirements that drove the changes, the reason behind the changes, and all the dialog that was happening around the changes. For most of us we capture these details via email, commit history in our version control system (e.g. Subversion, Perforce Read Article

Crosstalk Elimination Techniques in Altium Designer Remember back in school when the teacher would ask the class a question and you actually knew the answer! You and a few other students would excitedly raise your hands hoping the teacher would call on you. And if you were lucky enough to speak first you felt vindicated for the time you invested studying while some of your friends opted for other activities like playing outside. Although being able to speak without interruption was elating, the Read Article

Weekly Digest: Expert Articles and Altium Designer Youtube Videos We’ve collected everything published this week to bring our readers resources to read, watch and listen to all in one place. This week we have two new articles from thought leaders that we think you’ll like. Take a look and join the conversation on social media or in the comments section of the articles listed below. Articles on the PCB Design Blog For the avid reader, there’s never a shortage of informative articles on our PCB Design Blog. Check Read Article

Top 8 Flexible Circuit Advantages Early in my career, someone told me that flex circuit applications are really only limited by our imagination. I pondered that for a while, and I couldn’t agree more. Most of these “aha” moments happen when we are passing around a bunch of different samples, and a particular shape or level of flexibility sparks a new idea. One of the favorite parts of my job is the magical moment when I am working with a designer or group of engineers trying to Read Article

6:38 Six Basic Design Rules for Any PCB Design - OnTrack Watch Video

5:29 The importance of Snapping in CAD software - OnTrack Watch Video

What You Need to Know About Choosing Embedded Modems for IoT IoT enables you to control devices over the internet. If you grew up in an era where the Internet existed without Google, you may be as amazed as I am to see how far technology has evolved. It would have been beyond my wildest imagination to think about machines conversing intelligently on the Internet without much human intervention. Back when I was introduced to the online world, it took several minutes to simply load a single page of sports Read Article

Build Your Own Patch Antenna for Your Next PCB On the surface, devices with wireless capabilities seem like they would be pretty complicated. Once I started diving into designing wireless systems, I realized that incorporating these capabilities is only as complex as you make it. Thankfully, there are some simple solutions that you can use to add wireless communication to your next PCB. If you’re looking to add GPS, WiFi, or other communication capabilities to your next electronic device, you Read Article

How to Hire The Right PCB Designer for Your Project I’ve watched less than 10 hours of TV for the past 5 years. Many claims that staying away from TV is pivotal to success has influenced my decision. I can’t resist catching up on my favorite superhero movies at the cinema, though, or on certain occasions, some random movies to de-stress for the week. There are times when I end up with a dull, two-hour-long screenplay with a predictable storyline. Guess, I should have paid attention to all the Read Article

AutoRouter and Massive Potential for Routing Ease I once owned a little pop-up tent trailer, and hooking it up to my car was a very involved process. My wife would use a combination of hand signals and shouted instructions to guide me in as I moved the car back and forth in order to position the hitch perfectly under the trailer coupler. One day my father in-law-was helping me and I started my lengthy explanation to him of the hitching process. Without saying a word he simply reached down Read Article

Carry Propagation Delay in High Speed Data Processing I sometimes get into text message conversations with friends that go completely haywire. It’s too easy to ask five questions back and forth in a single text, and trying to respond to everything causes our message chain to go completely out of sync. It isn’t until three text messages later that I actually respond to everything my friend asked, and by then we’ve moved on to a completely new topic. Signal delay between logic circuits in a PCB or an Read Article

Comparing Electronic Prices with Supply Chain Visibility Thankfully, I’m no longer a broke college student that has ramen every other day for dinner. But the spending and budgeting habits I developed during that period of my life have stuck with me and served me well into adulthood. I’m not eating ramen anymore, but I still keep an eye on my monthly budget. If you’re considering which components to include in your next PCB and are trying to formulate a production budget, you’ll need access to supply Read Article

Impedance and PCB Etching: Utilizing Altium Designer for Your Board Needs Today’s high-speed PCB designs require that the design engineer take charge of how the circuit board will be built. There was a time where PCB construction specifics were handled by manufacturing engineers in another department, or even in another company. How the board was built up didn’t have an important effect on the signal performance, and the purpose of the design team was to simply create electrical circuitry that performed the function Read Article

Preparing for Manufacturing with PCB Panelization Software If you work in manufacturing or you plan to produce a new product, productivity is the name of the game. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the focus has been producing more widgets per man hour, and PCBs are no different. When you’re bringing a new product to market, why pay more for your order than you need to? One way to improve productivity in a PCB manufacturing process is to use the proper panelization scheme. If you have the right PCB Read Article

Utilizing Layout Options for Rigid-Flex Design If you own an electronic device that folds, bends, twists, or deforms in some way, it most likely contains a rigid-flex PCB. These circuits contain many of the elements in any PCB, like traces, vias, and even components mounted on a flexible ribbon. However, getting started with a comprehensive design for these circuits requires the right software specifically built for rigid-flex boards. Form factors are becoming more specialized and demanding Read Article

Weekly Digest: Printed Electronics and PCB Design We’ve collected everything published this week to bring our readers resources to read, watch and listen to all in one place. This week we’ve explored Printed Electronics on the podcast by discussing materials and modern applications of the technology. We’d like to take an opportunity to share a few other recent resources on the topic: Printed Electronics Whiteboard Video with David Marrachki How to Design Printed Electronics in Altium Designer 19 Read Article

Impedance Controlled Routing for Boards Made in Altium Designer Computing requirements and applications require data be processed at faster rates than ever before. As communication bands start to fill and newer components hit the market, PCBs will need to operate at higher data rates and frequencies. Networking and data center applications like 100G and faster Ethernet, as well as advanced wireless protocols like 5G and 6G, will continue operating well into the mmWave regime and beyond. These facts mean Read Article