PCB Routing

Browse our library of resources to learn more about pcb design and pcb routing.

Why an Auto-Interactive Router Routes Cleaner Traces than an Auto Router When I was a boy, my room was always a mess. Since I thought I knew where everything was, there was no reason to clean it. Finally, after a lot of pressure from my parents and my peers, I capitulated and cleaned up the room. The difference was amazing. It was so much easier to get around now that I had a clear path. The same can be said about PCB trace routing from an auto router. Auto routers are known for producing disorganized routes that are Read Article

RF Interference Prevention and RF PCB Design in the Internet of Things Have you ever been to a party where there was so much noise you could barely hear yourself think? I’m a dedicated introvert, but sometimes my friends lure me out to such gatherings with promises that it will be “very relaxed.” They never are, and I don’t seem to learn. It’s times like those that I wish it was socially acceptable to wear noise-canceling headphones to such events. In the world of electronics, the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT) Read Article

High Speed PCB Design Considerations: Bypass Capacitor Place and Route Tips Many years ago, the majority of the board designs that I was involved with were simple digital designs. Placing and routing bypass capacitors in those designs was very easy, and often the circuitry was slow enough that ceramic capacitors were not needed. Most of the time we considered bypass capacitor placement and routing as more of an afterthought than as a primary design consideration. I remember how some of the engineers even instructed me to Read Article

Why PCB Design Auto-Interactive Routing is Not a PCB Autorouter Editorial credit: Santiparp Wattanaporn / Shutterstock.com A while back I was given the gift of a flight in an AT-6, a WWII era airplane used for training fighter pilots. There couldn’t have been a better gift for an aviation enthusiast, and I spent the next 5 months eagerly anticipating it. Finally, the day arrived and I couldn’t have been happier as we took off into the wild blue yonder. Then the pilot demonstrated an aileron roll, and my Top Read Article

High Voltage PCB Design for Arc Prevention: How to Manage Pads and Traces: 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: High Voltage PCB Design for Arc Prevention. 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 think in the comments Read Article

Hand Routing vs Using an Automated Router: Why Auto-Interactive Routing Is the Ideal PCB Design Solution I have been designing printed boards for a long time. Like most experienced PCB designers, I have my reservations about autorouters. Autorouters have a reputation for being difficult to set up and run, taking a long time to work, and giving questionable results. Often you would put your board into the router in the evening only to find the next morning that the results were not worth saving. I knew designers who would spend hours and hours Read Article

High Speed PCB Design Considerations: Component Shape Considerations When starting a high speed PCB design, there’s a lot that must be considered before the design ever gets into layout. Schematic organization, board materials & layer configuration, critical component placement, and how high speed signals are to be routed are all aspects of high speed design that need to be planned for. Often there is one area that doesn’t get as much consideration as everything else, and that is the component footprint shapes Read Article

Stripline vs Microstrip: PCB Routing Differences and Guidelines The first time I heard a presentation on high speed design techniques, it went straight over my head. Since this was at the beginning of my career as a PCB designer, I’m sure that it was my inexperience that caused the confusion. The whole concept of stripline and microstrip routing didn’t make any sense to me and I thought that the instructor was talking about a completely different type of PCB designs that I wasn’t familiar with. Fortunately Read Article

Board Layer Stackup Considerations for High Speed Board Design I’ve been designing boards for a long time; however when I began my career, the boards I designs were pretty simple. Most of them were small low speed designs with very few restrictions on them. Test boards and control panels, I cannot tell you how many simple 2 and 4 layer boards I have designed in my career. That being said, as my skills increased, so did the complexity of the boards that I designed. A particular high point for me was when I Read Article

Considerations for Designing a High Voltage PCB: 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: Considerations for Designing a High Voltage PCB. 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 think in the Read Article

How to Plan Your PCB Layout for a High Voltage Design: 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 Plan Your PCB Layout For A High Voltage Design. 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 think in the Read Article

High Speed PCB Design Guidelines: An Overview for Getting Started: 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 Speed PCB Design Guidelines: An Overview for Getting Started. 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

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 Plan Your PCB Layout for a High Voltage Design I used to trail run with a friend who is an urban planner. As part of her devious plan to get me to run further before I was too tired and bored, she’d tell me about the various considerations that go into the zoning and construction in a town. There were also a lot of shenanigans with local politics that provided a juicy distraction. Although my friend would disagree, a high voltage PCB layout have some similarities to complex urban planning. In Read Article

How to Prevent Hairline Short Circuits in Your PCB Circuit Design In most cases, locating a hairline short is nearly impossible until it’s too late. What’s worse than finding a strand of hair in your pasta when you’re out on a dinner date? Finding it after it has ended up in your mouth. There are two ways to avoid awkward scenarios like this. For one, you can keep a close eye on your food and make sure it is hair free before it enters your mouth. The second is to ensure that there is no chance of a hair ending Read Article

Considerations for Designing a High Voltage PCB I used to think that high voltage applications were only used in power engineering. Since I had no desire to work at a power plant or transformer station, I was safe from having to learn high voltage PCB design considerations. Alas, my interest in space applications proved me wrong and forced me to confront my laziness. It turns out high voltage applications show up in almost every industry, from manufacturing and power plants to medical and Read Article