Schematic Capture

Browse our library of resources to learn more about pcb design and schematic capture or schematic entry to learn more about wiring symbols and become more efficient at creating electronic diagrams for your PCB design project

Old Wisdom: Best Schematic Software Simplifies Schematic to PCB Synchronizing You’ve heard it said: “there’s no school like the old school.” Is that always true though? When I was a kid my “old school” taught me to type on a typewriter, not a word processor. If I was using that old school typewriter today, it would take me significantly longer to write this article. I wouldn’t have access to spell checking or any of the other helpful utilities that I’ve become accustomed to. I wouldn’t be able to easily backspace and re Read Article

How Schematic Design Reuse Can Help Your Next PCB Schematic Layout In the town where I live there is this lady who is a magician with a sewing machine. She is in charge of the wardrobes for the high school musicals and is a whiz at taking costumes from old shows, and reusing them for new productions. Sometimes she alters the older costumes, and sometimes she simply uses them the way they already are. In the show this year, the evil queen is wearing a flamboyant dress that is actually an altered version of a Read Article

PCB Design Process: The EDA Design Approach The electronic design automation (EDA) approach, which is also referred to as the electronic computer-aided design (ECAD) approach, is composed of a series of software tools that are used to execute and complete the electronic system design process. These systems can include printed boards (PCBs) as well as integrated circuits (ICs). When considering product development for printed circuit boards, a toolchain with a wide array of dissimilar tools Read Article

Advantages of Hierarchical Schematic Design for PCB Schematic Layouts Do you work for a company that has its structure defined on an organizational chart? If so, then you know how useful a hierarchical structure is. By knowing who reports to whom, and which departments have dotted line cross-functional reports, you know who to go to for specific questions or tasks. On the other hand, if your company doesn’t have that kind of hierarchical structure, it can lead to a lot of confusion. The organization of a schematic Read Article

PCB Design Software Features To Consider Before making a decision on buying a home, you would probably ask a lot of questions. Is it close to the facilities and services that are important to you? Is it in a good and safe neighborhood? Will the layout of the house satisfy your needs? These are all important questions that need to be answered before you commit to living there. In the same way, buying new PCB design software deserves the same level of scrutiny. You will want to find out Read Article

High Speed Design Techniques: Schematic Considerations With my apologies to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein for borrowing their lyrics, “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…” In this case, however, we are going to be looking at high frequency and high speed PCB design techniques instead of a Hollywood musical, and the beginning happens to be the schematic. You may argue that the place to start would be on the ground plane itself. Board materials, layer stackup planning Read Article

Why You Need Integrated Circuit Simulation: 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: Why You Need Integrated Circuit Simulation. 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

Why You Need Integrated Circuit Simulation Integrated Simulation: integrated simulator, or simulating ICs? You aren’t a newbie anymore but here’s why we say keep the integrated simulator in your toolkit. As your career progresses, you become more confident. You’ll tend to collect circuits you know work well in different designs - power supplies, filters, oscillators, etc. Most of the time these reusable blocks will work great in any place you choose to use them, but using simulation can Read Article

The Wild West of PCB Design - Part Choice Showdown Does your part selection process ever feel like a wild west showdown, where every stakeholder is out to protect their own self-interests at the expense of your own? Learn how to turn your part choice selections into a win-win for your entire design team with a new feature in Altium Designer® 16. Link Does your part selection process ever feel like a scene from a wild west movie, where every stakeholder is out to protect their own self-interests Read Article

How to Avoid the Most Common Errors in Your Schematic Design Process There are over 100 errors a PCB designer can make in the schematic design process. Are you catching them all in your current design criteria review process? Read on to find out how you can better catch some of the most common PCB design mistakes. A Decade of Differences Schematic designs review processes were a lot simpler 10 years ago, and the schematic review process to check for errors didn’t seem to require such a huge dedication of man-hours Read Article

5 Time-Saving Productivity Features in Altium Designer You Need to Be Using Now Are you getting the most efficiency out of your Altium Designer® workflow? Use these 5 time-saving features to enhance your PCB design productivity. I sat down to talk with some of our best and brightest at Altium Designer, those that have poured countless hours and effort into learning, using, and developing Altium Designer. Why? I wanted to extract the top 5 productivity features they use day in and day out that shave hours off of their design Read Article

How to use Schematic CAD Drawings for Cable Assemblies: Part 3 The long anticipated part 3 in Sainesh Solanki's Cable and Harness Design blog series is here! This installment continues the establishment of libraries with connector heads and crimp lugs, as well as how to model heat shrinks. We introduce some parameters too, which enable wire-to-crimp compatibility checks. Take a look! Creating Components Continued... There are two additional schematic symbols that can be added into your. The first is the Read Article

Power Nets Management: Circuit Board Best Practices A recent BugCrunch item (Power input vs output) raised the long standing issue of power management in Altium Designer®. PCB fabrication can be a complicated process when considering all of the items that go into it. Between the vias, solder mask, and solder, things can get messy. To ensure we are all on the same page, I have some opinions on PCB assembly before work gets started. As always, I will be very interested in your thoughts and comments Read Article

The Transition of Transistors Even if you’re not an electrical engineer, chances are you still love technology and all it offers, whether it be for work or pleasure. We all get caught up in the buzz when a new processor comes out and hear things like how Intel is using a 14nm (nanometer) technology and has over a billion graphene transistors. But what exactly is this technology and for what device? Back to the Basics As complicated as the world of engineering can be Read Article

How to Simplify and Automate Your PCB ECO Workflow Shuffling different programs for your schematic and PCB layout design changes costs both time and money. Altium Designer® tackles this issue with a unified design system that automatically transfers data between schematic and PCB using component links. Read on to learn how component links are increasing productivity by automating ECO procedures. Transferring data from schematic to PCB, or vice versa, is traditionally a task stretched across Read Article

The Peak of Engineering Efficiency is Now Available in Altium Designer 17 The Peak of Engineering Efficiency and PCB Design Technology is Now Available in Altium 17 The engineering mentality is one focused on efficiency and creativity. And whether you’re designing electronics in today’s autonomous vehicles or connected devices, the careful balance between art and science walks a very thin line. Sooner or later, you’re bound to hit a roadblock. Not in your ideas, but in executing those ideas efficiently in your tools Read Article

Using Hierarchical Schematic Design to Stay Organized and Synchronized New Altium Designer® users may not fully understand the benefits of organizing schematic sheets into a hierarchical top-down or bottom-up perspective. Read on to learn how to keep your design project organized and synchronized with circuit schematic hierarchies. New Altium users may not fully understand the benefits of organizing schematic sheets into a hierarchical top-down or bottom-up perspective. As a result, users often proceed with simple Read Article