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PCB Routing

Routing in your PCB makes copper connections between components, and best routing practices will help ensure signal integrity, low crosstalk, and low EMI. Browse our library of resources to learn more about routing in your PCB and how the best PCB layout software helps you obey routing rules and signaling standards.

Routing Guidelines for PCB Layouts Efficient PCB Routing Routing PCB Traces in Altium Designer High-Speed Routing Guidelines

Designing 5G Devices The next stage in the evolution of mobile telephony is here with the roll-out of 5G. The designer looking to incorporate functionality to handle 5G signals into their circuits will face some challenging issues. So, what’s so special about 5G. The main change in the jump from 4G to 5G is the frequency band at which signals are transmitted. For 4G, this band covered 0.7 GHz up to 2.5 GHz. For 5G, this new band is an order of magnitude larger, with Read Article

Serial Communications Protocols - Part Four: RS-485 This article is from a series of articles looking at some of the popular Serial Communication Protocols. These will cover a few of the more popular protocols and standards in use today. After this series, we will review and compare their advantages and disadvantages. We aim to provide helpful information that you can cross-reference next time you need to choose the best serial communication bus for your design. In this article, we will be looking Read Article

Through Thick And Thin — How Do You Get High Current Into a High Speed PCB? The typical large currents in today’s high speed PCB designs require a different approach. This article will describe the stackup requirements associated with these very large current PCBs and how to design them so that they can be readily manufactured properly. Read Article

25:58 Best Practices: Efficient Use of Snapping in Altium Designer Getting your PCB layout design done takes patience and precision. Complex footprint geometries, board shape, and dense component placement require Watch Video

50:48 PCB Component Placement Webinar Proper component placement is one of the most important aspects of PCB design. You need to familiarize yourself with the Watch Video

50:25 Altium Designer 19 Key Features We are pleased to announce the release of Altium Designer 19.0! An exciting new era of Altium Designer is here Watch Video

Understanding Ground Planes in Your Two-Layer PCB Back when I was a young and hungry grad student, my first PCB ground plane design was used to collect analog signals from several sensors. When looking at a voltage graph of my measurements, the noise level was horrible and completely masked the signal I was trying to measure. I soon realized that I had completely bungled my ground plane connections, and ground loops were ruining my signals. Placing your ground plane and routing to ground are two Read Article

How to Test for a Short Circuit on a PCB Every engineer has that “worst case scenario” story that they survived. During the worst week of my professional life, we had a shipment of overdue PCBs come in. These PCBs were supposed to have been installed in hardware and deployed at customer sites more than a month earlier. We were beyond a little mortified. Needless to say, there was a slight rush to ship these new circuit boards. Once we powered them up for testing, you could smell the Read Article

The Best Multilayer PCB Design Tips for Circuit Board Layout Doing something new for the first time can be difficult. Baby birds probably don’t appreciate being pushed out of the nest and teenagers are nervous before their first real date. I, personally, was scared to death on my first date. However, I’m glad that I took that first step because that milestone was a great moment in my life. Designing your first multilayer PCB board may not be quite like a first date, but it's still a critical step for a PCB Read Article

Utilizing a PCB Transmission Line Calculator Makes Design Easier Calculators are impressively helpful with your PCB designs; however, having these calculations built into your PCB design software user interface is beyond fantastic. ALTIUM DESIGNERDesign software tools that can augment your circuit board calculations. Power supply designers understand the complex technical details and functional requirements involved with a switched mode power supply PCB layout. The layout establishes the functional and thermal Read Article

Upgrade from AutoCAD PCB to Altium Designer's Unified Environment Most designers are familiar with AutoCAD for mechanical or construction drafting, and for making important engineering diagrams. Although AutoCAD is great for many tasks involved in electrical or mechanical engineering, PCB designers need more than mechanical drafting tools to make advanced electronics. To get your designs to the next level, you need the best set of ECAD tools on the market, rather than using the AutoCAD PCB package.If you’re not Read Article

Step Up Into Altium Designer from PCAD The original goal of PCAD, to give PCB designers the best tools possible, lives on today in Altium. Altium Designer is made for designers like you, and will import your legacy PCAD designs so you can continue your work. ALTIUM DESIGNERCAD software that will continue through the years. Back in 1982 an innovative new PCB design software CAD tool called P-CAD was introduced to the world. This PCAD PCB design tool quickly outgrew its competition and Read Article

Protel PCB Design Software has Rebranded to Altium Designer Protel PCB isn’t gone, it has been rebranded and enhanced as Altium Designer. ALTIUM DESIGNERThe most powerful, modern and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use. You don’t have to look very hard to find software such as Protel PCB design software or Diptrace still in use. Since the mid-1980’s, Protel has been used for PCB design in companies all over the world as well as in universities for teaching circuit design and in homes for the Read Article

The Best EDA Software for PCB Design You don’t have time for underperforming tools that are difficult to learn and use, you need the best EDA software for PCB design that you can get; Altium Designer. ALTIUM DESIGNERThe most powerful, modern and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use.You’ve got a job that needs to be done and that means the printed circuit board design is your responsibility. You don’t have time for PCB design tools that are underpowered and second rate Read Article

Design Your Small Circuit Board in Altium Designer Large circuit boards, small circuit boards, and anything in between might seem like they need separate sets of PCB layout features. In reality, your PCB design software shouldn’t delineate your PCB design based on size. Whether you need to design a large or small circuit board, a design application with high quality CAD tools will help you get the job done quickly and prepare your board for production. Small circuit board designs are much easier Read Article

EMI Shielding Techniques You Can Use in Your PCB Design Software Electromagnetic interference (EMI) is such a problem that governments around the world have placed limits on the amount of EMI an electronic device is allowed to generate or receive. Your electronic device needs to be designed to prevent unintentional radiation and suppress conducted noise up to a very high frequency value. This is not a simple matter of adding filtering on every circuit in your PCB layout, it’s about considering the entire Read Article

Guide to High Speed PCB Layout Techniques in Altium Designer High speed PCB layout and routing can be complex and requires many diverse considerations. Important layout and routing guidelines for your design span everything from trace widths on transmission lines to ground pour clearances, return path tracking, defined characteristic impedance, and much more. Simple design software packages simply can’t handle all of these constraints at once, leaving the circuit board designer to manually check every Read Article