Best in Class Interactive Routing

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PCB Routing

Make Production Outputs a Breeze with Altium Designer’s Netlist in PCB Design Production and output files are necessary for getting your designs out into the world. Ensure that your design software is taking care to make this process as simple and easy as possible. ALTIUM DESIGNER An optimal PCB design software for your circuit board needs. As your PCB design transitions from schematic to layout and then to production, providing the right amount of intelligence for manufacturers becomes a high priority. You can add Read Article

Understanding PCB Copper Thickness in Altium Designer

Understanding Copper Weight and Thickness in PCB Design At one time it was a simple process for printed circuit board designers to get their design manufactured. Board sizes and layer stacks were more generic, and usually, someone else made all the hard layer configuration choices for you. It is a completely different game now with multi-layer PCB designs ranging from two to over thirty layers. In addition, trace widths, ground planes, hole sizes, substrate materials, characteristic impedance Read Article

Fundamental Approach to PCB Antenna Design

The Best PCB Antenna Design Software Eases Antenna Implementation Circuit Board antenna design can be a difficult task for any software; however, that shouldn’t be a problem for Altium Designer, which can serve as your go-to BLE antenna design software and much more. ALTIUM DESIGNER Ensuring that your antenna designs are placed without issue Consumer and industrial demand have prompted the demand for smaller wireless devices. The devices support wearable technologies, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) applications Read Article

The Best EDA Software for PCB Design

The Best Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Software for PCB Design You don’t have time for underperforming electronic design automation (EDA) tools that are difficult to learn and use, you need the best EDA software for PCB design automation that you can get; Altium Designer. But what is EDA software? ALTIUM DESIGNER The most powerful, modern, and easy-to-use EDA simulation software or electronic design automation software for professional use. You’ve got a job that needs to be done and that means the printed Read Article

Propagation Delay Calculators in High-Speed PCB Design

Propagation Delay Calculators in High-Speed PCB Design Propagation delay becomes an important consideration in high-speed PCB design. You’ll need to make sure that your signals remain synchronized throughout your board in order to prevent skew. A PCB design package that incorporates a propagation delay calculator as part of your design rules makes it easy to compensate for propagation delay, allowing you to focus on routing and signal integrity, rather than manually adjusting traces and calculating Read Article

Round and Curved PCB Design in Altium Designer

Round and Curved PCB Design in Altium Designer Our modern lives would not be possible without electronics. Sometimes it seems like a race to be the first person to wire everything in your house onto PCBs. With the multitude of possible device shapes and sizes, circular or rounded PCBs are becoming more popular. If you want to design your next device on a round PCB, your design software needs CAD and layout tools that don’t constrain you to working on rectangular PCBs. When you work with Read Article

Length matching with differential pairs is like walking a tightrope

Differential Pair Length Matching: Best Practices for Signal Integrity Conceptually, differential pairs are very simple, being just a pair of equal and opposite polarity signals running on two parallel conductors. In terms of signal integrity, differential pair routing becomes progressively more difficult when frequencies get higher. At the low end of the possible range of rise time values and frequencies, timing is the main constraint, while at faster rates we see issues with skew, mode conversion, and bandwidth Read Article

Interactive differential pair length tuning in Altium Designer

How to Perform Differential Pair Tuning in Altium Designer In order to properly suppress common-mode noise, differential pairs should be routed in parallel with symmetry and matched lengths. Today's CAD tools make it easy to come close to all three objectives, but only if you have the right design tools. Instead of eyeing out your different pair lengths, the interactive routing tools in Altium Designer make differential pair length matching easy. You can encode permissible length mismatches as design Read Article

How to Create a Test Point Schematic Symbol and Footprint in Altium Designer

How to Create a Test Point Schematic Symbol and Footprint in Altium Designer Bare board testing is like a moment of truth, where your fabricator and your design team determines whether a board passes inspection. Some basic test fixtures and testing points should be indicated in your schematic and your PCB layout, especially when they are critical for evaluating board functionality. So what is the best way to do this? You might rely on your manufacturer to assign test points, but for critical circuit blocks, you should Read Article

Decoupling Capacitor and Bypass Placement Guidelines

Decoupling Capacitor and Bypass Placement Guidelines Power integrity issues are often assessed from the power supply side, but examining IC output is equally crucial. Decoupling and bypass capacitors help stabilize power fluctuations on the PDN, ensuring consistent signal levels and maintaining a steady voltage at an IC’s power and ground pins. To assist with effective usage, we've outlined essential design guidelines for bypassing and decoupling capacitors in your next PCB. This blog explores the Read Article

Differential Crosstalk and Spacing Between Differential Pairs

Differential Pair Spacing and Crosstalk in PCB Design Differential crosstalk causing problems in your signals? Here’s how differential signals produce crosstalk and how you can ensure differential signal integrity. Read Article

Switchback Routing vs. Serpentine Routing for Maximum Density

Switchback Routing vs. Serpentine Traces Routing for Maximum Density Choosing between switchback routing or serpentine routing means considering signal integrity and crosstalk in your board. Read Article

PCB Trace Inductance and Width: How Wide is Too Wide?

PCB Trace Inductance Calculation: How Wide is Too Wide? Here’s how you can size your traces correctly and ensure they have sufficiently low PCB trace inductance. Read Article

3D view of USB charger project in Altium Designer

USB Charger Project in Altium Designer: Part 2 Click here to jump to the viewer embed and browse this project In a previous blog post, I showed the process for building a schematic for a custom USB charger board using Altium Designer. This board requires a small number of components and some particular attention to the USB power supply design/decoupling networks, but aside from this it’s quite easy to build out the connections you need for the USB A connectors. Here, I’ll show the strategy Read Article

3D view of USB charger project in Altium Designer

USB Charger Project in Altium Designer: Part 1 When I’m in my office, I keep my pluggable USB charger around, otherwise the battery on my phone is likely to run out. If you want to build your own USB charger, you can create your own USB charger board with the powerful schematic design and layout tools in Altium Designer. Here, I’ll present the overall design process for a portable USB charger. The charger requires 12 V of power and charges two external devices through two USB ports. We’ll Read Article

PCB Design for Radio-Over-Fiber Technology

PCB Design for Radio-Over-Fiber Technology It’s possible that radio-over-fiber technology is one of the least discussed aspects of fiber telecom networks. However, it stands to be one of the many portions of telecom infrastructure for bringing broadband wireless access to remote areas. This approach is likely to play a major role for future 5G infrastructure in rural areas where a standard wireless backhaul is not possible or cost-prohibitive. Just like any other electronic system, radio Read Article

Download the Best Circuit Maker Software by Altium

Download the Best Circuit Maker Software by Altium To Create the Best Designs, Download the Best Circuit Maker Software from Altium. ALTIUM DESIGNER The most powerful, modern, and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use. To save yourself from the trouble of working with a mixture of design tools in multiple systems you need Altium Designer, the circuit maker software that contains all the tools you need in one system. Now you can sign up for Altium Designer. Creating a printed circuit Read Article