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Release Management

Project Release Management within PCB Design Software

Project Release Management within PCB Design Software You’ve worked night and day to get your PCB design done and finally, the last trace has been connected, the last silkscreen reference has been tweaked, and the final DRC has passed. It’s time to call it a weekend, right? Wrong. You’ve still got a boatload of work to do to get all of your output files created for your manufacturers. A lot of PCB release design tool vendors provide different mechanisms for making the creation of output files easier Read Article

Managing Your PCB Design Through BOM Planning: What’s Important

Managing Your PCB Design Through BOM Planning: What’s Important Back in my younger days, I was infatuated with Legos. Every chance I had, I would run into the toy store with a pocket full of change from weekly chores swiping as many sets as I could afford. Looking back on these days, I’m surprised at how complex these structures were that I (at the ripe age of 8) was actually able to assemble. It never seemed like it was too difficult of a task either. I never felt incredibly overwhelmed with the procurement Read Article

PCB Floorplanning: The First Step to PCB Design Integrity

PCB Floorplanning: The First Step to PCB Design Integrity You’ve just received your first protoboards, and you are excited to put them into the product and fire them up. You love your design and you are ready to rock. The product goes into the EMI chamber, and it fails emissions. The product is noisy. You dive in with the test engineer to investigate. As you slowly unplug cables to isolate the noise, you find out your PCB is the cause. You think, no problem, I put filters on the board. You start Read Article

Optimizing Your BOM for Rapid Prototype Manufacturing

BOM Optimization for Rapid Prototype Manufacturing Your BOM can make your manufacturing speeds, especially if you want your prototyping to be done quick and smooth. Read Article

Assessing the Post-Development Hardships of Uncontrolled Data Management

Assessing the Post-Development Hardships of Uncontrolled Data Management For every, team, and business, getting to the release state should be the moment where you can breathe a sigh of relief. This moment, unfortunately, doesn’t always lend itself to joyful celebration. Project completion can mean a) you and your team have successfully constructed a design without any flaws in the documentation process and can now prep for its release, or b) you’ve successfully completed your design but realize a minor (or major) Read Article

Design Release Management and Communicating Intent

Design Release Management and Communicating Intent We know that designing and releasing a product involves a multidisciplinary chain of command. Prior to its release, the ECAD side often goes through a series of adaptations to capture the incremental changes to the design. During this stage, the ECAD data is a moving target, which can impede the flow of communication to invested parties. Failure to effectively communicate these changes can have significant consequences on the design release Read Article

Creating a custom Altium pick and place file

Creating a custom Altium pick and place file I recently worked with a customer who had to generate a nonstandard pick and place file because his assembly house was using antiquated equipment and could not accept a standard Altium pick and place file. I thought it might be helpful to show how to use the Bill of Material generator within Altium Designer^® to create a custom report to meet such needs. I recently worked with a customer who had to generate a nonstandard pick and place file Read Article

The Top Two File Format Alternatives to Replace Gerber RS-274X

The Top Two File Format Alternatives to Replace Gerber RS-274X Despite its popular use in about 90% of all PCBs designed worldwide, Gerber RS-274X has several practical limitations that can lead to a number of problems during your fabrication process. What are the alternatives to this file format? Read on to find out. Meta Description: Although Gerber RS-274X is used in about 90% of all PCB designs it has several practical limitations. Gerber RS-274X is the de facto standard for PCB design software, but that Read Article

Altium Designer 17 and the Ever-Changing World of PCB Design Software

Altium Designer 17 and the Ever-Changing World of PCB Design Software The big news from Altium’s point of view is Altium Designer^®, an exciting new release of our professional PCB design software. Coincidentally, the release of version 17 occurs at a very newsworthy time with the announcement of a major acquisition in the EDA industry. Altium as a company has always focused on the needs of the PCB design engineers, how to make their job of design easier, and providing a truly unified set of tools that are Read Article

How to Keep Your PCB Design Variants Synchronized

PCB Design Variant Management to Synchronize Designs Product customization is increasingly popular to satisfy customer demand as both time-to-market and the complexity of products continue upward without abatement. By making variations of a baseline product, the new products can address different markets and requirements. But how do you go about keeping synchronized PCB variants? Making the Case for PCB Design Variants You are developing a PCB layout for a smartwatch that comes in three different Read Article

Confidently Capture All Design Details in the Design Document

Confidently Capture All Design Details in PCB Design Documentation The design document must capture all aspects of the design of a system. This includes the specification, design intent, design process and traceability back to the specification. Only then can the designer be confident that all relevant design information has been captured in one place. This paper is meant to be a guideline to prompt you to consider how to capture design details beyond the fabrication and assembly drawings. INTRODUCTION One of Read Article

The New Age of PCB Documentation

The New Age of PCB Documentation Learn how to eliminate the stress of manual PCB documentation with automated creation of drawings based on the details of your PCB design. To learn more about this topic please see the full solution - How to Eliminate the Manual Documentation Process - at Altium.com. Read Article

Navigating the Perils of Design Review

Navigating the Perils of Design Review Design reviews cause shivers to run up the spine of even the most seasoned engineer. No matter how much time, eﬀort, and checking has been invested, there is still a fear that something might have been overlooked. This paper will touch on some simple filtering and highlight techniques to help visually isolate critical components and nets...all in an eﬀort to make your next design review just a little less stressful. INTRODUCTION Ensuring PCB Read Article

Reverse Engineering Project Libraries

Reverse Engineering Project Libraries Outsourcing has become the de-facto solution for companies seeking to cut costs and increase their profit margins. Rather than consuming their own resources on a particular task, companies farm it out to other firms that specializes in that particular area, leaving them to focus on what they do best. New product design often gets contracted out to separate design firms. If that’s you — your company outsources PCB design or your company is a PCB Read Article

The Final Step: Online Design Rule Check

The Final Step: Online Design Rule Check PCB designers begin with a set of physical requirements and specifications regarding the board layout. Certain factors such as the clearance between components and other primitives, establishment of electrical connection, size requirements of traces and vias, are just a few of the requirements that must be followed when designing a PCB. The ever-increasing complexity of boards has made it nearly impossible to carry out this verification manually Read Article

3D PDF Capabilities Support Seamless Communication

3D PDF Capabilities Support Seamless Communication It’s diﬃcult to communicate aspects of a printed circuit board design eﬀectively, using only text and static images. This is especially true in today’s world of increasingly complex PCB design. However, the Altium Designer3D PDF flip book export capabilities take advantage of the native 3D format, as well as the ability to embed this format into PDF documents. Thisexport format grants users the ability to share a fully-rendered, interactive, 3D Read Article

Alternatives to Gerber RS-274X

Alternatives to Gerber RS-274-X Gerber RS-274-X format is used for fabricating about 90% of all PCBs designed today worldwide. Learn about Gerber alternatives. To learn more about this topic please see the full solution - Alternatives to Gerber RS-274-X - at Altium.com. Read Article