Home
Products
Solutions
Community
Resources
Company
Free Trials

Download a free trial to find out which Altium software best suits your needs

Contact your local sales office to get started on improving your design environment

Download the latest in PCB design and EDA software

PCB DESIGN SOFTWARE

Altium Designer

Complete Environment for Schematic + Layout

Entry Level, Professional PCB Design Tool

Community Based PCB Design Tool

Agile PCB Design For Teams

CLOUD PLATFORM

Connecting PCB Design to the Manufacturing Floor

COMPONENT MANAGEMENT

Altium Concord Pro

Complete Solution for Library Management

Extensive, Easy-to-Use Component Database

PRODUCT EXTENSIONS

Natural and Effortless Power Distribution Network Analysis

See All Extensions

EMBEDDED

World-Renowned Technology for Embedded Systems Development

TRAININGS

Learn best practices with instructional training available worldwide

On-Demand Courses

Gain comprehensive knowledge without leaving your home or office

ONLINE VIEWER

Altium 365 Viewer

View & Share electronic designs in your browser

Altium Designer 20

The most powerful, modern and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use

Altium Designer 20

The most powerful, modern and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use

Annual PCB Design Summit

Forum
Where Altium users and enthusiasts can interact with each other
Blog
Our blog about things that interest us and hopefully you too
Ideas
Submit ideas and vote for new features you want in Altium tools
Bug Crunch
Help make the software better by submitting bugs and voting on what's important
Wall
A stream of events on AltiumLive you follow by participating in or subscribing to
Beta Program
Information about participating in our Beta program and getting early access to Altium tools

Explore the latest content from blog posts to social media and technical white papers gathered together for your convenience

Take a look at what download options are available to best suit your needs

Contact your local sales office to get started improving your design environment

Documentation
The documentation area is where you can find extensive, versioned information about our software online, for free.
Training & Events
View the schedule and register for training events all around the world and online
Design Content
Browse our vast library of free design content including components, templates and reference designs
Webinars
Attend a live webinar online or get instant access to our on demand series of webinars
Support
Get your questions answered with our variety of direct support and self-service options
Technical Papers
Stay up to date with the latest technology and industry trends with our complete collection of technical white papers.
Video Library
Quick and to-the-point video tutorials to get you started with Altium Designer

Altium Leadership

Altium is led by a team of highly passionate industry experts

Market Announcements

Announcements to the ASX market from the preceding 3 years

Customer Success

Our customers can be found changing every industry; see how

Thought Leadership

Altium works closely with the industry's leading experts to bring you these thought leadership resources on PCB Design.

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

Creating a Ground Plane for Your PCB Design It used to be that printed circuit boards seemed to have the same basic layer configuration, or at least that’s the way I tend to remember it. This meant that they were usually six layer multi-layer boards, with a ground plane and a VCC plane. The old CAD systems didn’t really have the ability to do much with power planes except to designate layers as a negative plane. The most you would see in them would be some “X’s” where there was supposed to Read Article

Identifying Minimum Trace Spacing and Trace Requirements in Altium Taking the time to set up routing rules to govern the minimum trace spacing and width requirements for PCB layout can be tedious. Many designers would prefer to jump in and start trace routing without going through this setup process first. This can be dangerous though as you may inadvertently route a trace routing at the wrong width, or pack your routing in so tightly that you don’t have the room to make any width corrections later on. The more Read Article

How to Panelize Your PCBs Before Lunch with Altium Designer Whether you have a slew of PCBs to mass produce for your customers or a handful of project boards you wish to prototype all in one simple swoop, panelization is an effective way to bring high amounts of efficiency to your production. In earlier days of PCB design, you would need additional software, hours of clunky engineering, and maybe even feasibility meetings with manufacturing teams for PCB panelization. Fortunately, we’ve graduated through Read Article

Designing to Meet a Target BOM Price per Unit The other day I was talking to a guy that used to play in different rock bands when he was younger and he told me of one gig where the stage was about 5 feet square - it wasn’t even big enough for their drum set. More detailed information up front, like with BOM prices, would have saved them a lot of frustration and wasted travel time. The establishment demanded that everything had to be on the stage which would never work. How many times have Read Article

Generate Gerber Files in Altium Designer Step-by-Step from Schematic to PCB As PCB designers, our job is only halfway done once we sketch out our schematics. We still have the somewhat technical task of actually designing a functional board. This is where great Printed Circuit Board software comes in handy. We can seamlessly create, edit, and send files in-between departments without having to stand in line at the photocopier. But how do we take a two-dimensional schematic sketch into a PCB Gerber layout ready to send Read Article

Preventing Ground Loops in Your PCB Design I think we’ve all been there. You buy that awesome stereo system only to hear that familiar humming sound in the background. When you take it back to the store the clerk blames the manufacturer. The stereo manufacturer then blames the component manufacturer and the component manufacturer can’t blame anyone. In reality, ground loops that form due to shoddy design are the source of the problem. Ground loops generate noise in electric circuits Read Article

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 Create a PCB Schematic | Altium Designer There’s an important step creating your PCB layout: How to create a PCB schematic? You might feel overwhelmed with all of the options, but don’t worry! Whether you’ve got decades of experience in your pocket or just starting your design or engineering career, your design begins with a printed circuit board schematic capture. Below is a schematic capture and creation tutorial in Altium Designer, a top rated PCB editor program. If you want to skip Read Article

How to Highlight Nets in Altium Designer to Simplify Schematic and PCB Designs Regardless how many PCBs I design, I always find myself having to regularly review network paths on schematics layer and trace routes on PCBs. The complexity reminds me of a maze where only one path is the right one for a particular network. It is imperative that all the connections are accurate as errors made here will come back to haunt you later in the form of redesigns. The best way to ensure network accuracy is by isolating it so that each Read Article

How to Create a PCB Manufacturing Cost Estimation Unless I receive a layout job directly from a manufacturer, my clients will usually ask if I’m a manufacturer. My company doesn’t manufacture boards, but I think it’s important to keep clients informed of the manufacturing costs for new PCBs. Once I started gathering estimates for some of my first projects, I started to better understand the primary cost drivers of PCB manufacturing and how to properly structure a comprehensive estimate for my Read Article

What is a Schematic Netlist for Your PCB? If you’ve created your next great schematic, there is a lot going on behind the scenes in your design software. The connectivity between components in your schematic can be reduced to a small number of logical and electrical identifiers. The schematic may provide a graphical picture showing connections between different components and pins, but to really understand everything about your design, you’ll need an important document. A schematic Read Article

Stealth Aircraft, Meet Quantum Radar If you read Max Clivefield's recent article on quantum computing and quantum communication, then you've got a head start on most when it comes to understanding entanglement. These esoteric areas of technology are likely to become more common in the coming decades, and could revolutionize modern technology. I don't think we'll ever have desktop quantum computers or quantum cell phones, but development of these new technologies has the potential to Read Article

Modeling Copper Foil Roughness in Altium Designer's Impedance Profiler Advanced transmission line models for long interconnects require that designers include copper foil roughness calculations in order to determine accurate impedance. Without the right models or design software, you’ll be left to estimate the skin effect impedance, dispersion, and parasitics in your PCB. These models can be difficult to work with by hand if you’re not mathematically inclined, but the right design tools can be used to quickly Read Article

Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing: An Introduction If you do a search for “Hardware-in-the-Loop” testing, you will frequently find examples of complex, real-time systems. This article from National Instruments, for example, gives a nice explanation and background on what hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) is, and provides an example of testing electronic control units within an automobile. In this article, we will be focusing on a smaller, more bite-sized version of HIL testing concepts. What is Hardware Read Article

Altium DbLibs and Electronic Components in the Cloud with Altium Designer 20.1 Industry expert Davide Bortolami discusses what DbLibs are, how they work, what they can help you achieve, and how to integrate them with Altium 365. Spoiler alert: it’s disgustingly easy. Read Article

What is Burn-in Testing for Electronics? Once you’re planning for production of any new board, you’ll likely be planning a battery of tests for your new product. These tests often focus on functionality and, for high speed/high frequency boards, signal/power integrity. However, you may intend for your product to operate for an extreme period of time, and you’ll need some data to reliably place a lower limit on your product’s lifetime. In addition to in-circuit tests, functional tests Read Article