Unified Design

Browse our library of resources to learn more about unified design strategies for PCB design engineers.

How to Navigate the Perils of PCB Design Review

How to Navigate the Perils of PCB Design Review Whether you’re a first-time designer or a hardened veteran, the integrity of your designs relies heavily on inspecting a product for design errors before production. What can be done to identify design flaws while staying productive? Before a new design is sent into production, it's critical to put the design through a PCB design review so that design errors can be identified before manufacturing. In many cases, a design will pass rules checks Read Article

Building the Library - Unified Data Model

Building the Library - Unified Data Model Introduction This may come as a shock to some, but I was raised on a farm back in Pennsylvania. Every spring, we would prepare for the planting season. It was amazing to me to take the seeds, plant them in the field, tend them, and in time end up with a crop. Within each one of those seeds was packed with an untapped potential to produce something amazing. In the same way, in the PCB Design field, we have untapped potential available to us in the Read Article

Modern User Interface Download PDF

Push and Shove Router: How it Works and Why You Need It

Push and Shove Router: How it Works and Why You Need It If you have a complex layout like the one shown above, and you need to move traces or vias around the board, what can you do to decrease your routing time? This is where the push and shove router feature in Altium Designer can be a huge help. Using this feature eliminates the need to reroute a large number of unselected traces as you adjust traces and vias in your layout. So when would you need to use something like this? Doesn’t this interfere Read Article

Agile Development and Testing: The Role of Simulations

Agile Development and Testing: The Role of Simulations Simulations can help you avoid repeated prototyping and testing Design, build, test; whether you are a hardware designer or a software engineer, you’ll go through multiple iterations when developing complex systems. The build and test portions are the moment of truth—when you find out whether your hard work will pay off. An important part of design, build, and test iterations concerns narrowly defining test cases and functionality requirements Read Article

PCB Design Rule Verification in Agile Development

PCB Design Rule Verification in Agile Development Agile development relies on a unique workflow that can benefit from PCB design rule verification I used to think that agile development is just a software development methodology with specific rules and processes. Agile hardware design processes seem to be rigid when viewed from the surface, but any agile design process is designed to allow a team to adapt to change throughout the product development cycle. In reality, the central ideas in agile Read Article

Integrate Your ECAD Tools with Mechanical Design Software

Integrate Your ECAD Tools with Mechanical Design Software Communication between ECAD and MCAD teams can be like a game of telephone Ever play a game of telephone as a child? Once the message gets back to the sender, successive miscommunication along the way causes the original message and idea to be completely modified. This is the same thing that happens when mechanical and electrical design teams are siloed into different groups. Collaboration breaks down and communication becomes difficult. The Read Article

How To Design the Perfect PCB Stack Up With Altium Designer

How To Design the Perfect PCB Stack Up With Altium Designer In the last 20+ years, electronics have become increasingly more complex. Board density is always being pushed to the limits, EMC/EMI regulations evolved and got stricter, and edge rates have become smaller. Therefore, the PCB Layout engineer needs a good understanding of EMC, PDN, EMI, and SI in order to route a modern PCB with confidence. In this article we’ll talk about some of the considerations we should have in order to create a PCB stackup Read Article

Crosstalk Elimination Techniques in Altium Designer

Crosstalk Elimination Techniques in Altium Designer Remember back in school when the teacher would ask the class a question and you actually knew the answer! You and a few other students would excitedly raise your hands hoping the teacher would call on you. And if you were lucky enough to speak first you felt vindicated for the time you invested studying while some of your friends opted for other activities like playing outside. Although being able to speak without interruption was elating, the Read Article

Technological Development Made Easy as Pie with Historical Altium Designer

Technological Development Made Easy as Pie with Historical Altium Designer Some words constantly pop-up in daily conversation. Think about how often the word “easy” is used, whether in a bumper sticker that says, “Easy Does It” or a childhood favorite, Easy Bake Ovens. We tell people to “take it easy” and refer to New Orleans as the “Big Easy.” I’m reasonably certain that a guide or book somewhere out there proclaims the “12 Easy Steps to Becoming a Nuclear Scientist.” In a 1940s film called “The Long Voyage Home,” a Read Article

DDR Layout Tips to Maximize Signal Integrity of Complex Memory Devices

DDR Layout Tips to Maximize Signal Integrity of Complex Memory Devices The science of transporting people by air has changed dramatically in a very brief period of time. During the 1920s, the Ford Trimotor was considered the ultimate luxury flight experience. Affectionately known as the “Tin Goose,” the first all-metal, multi-engine airliner could comfortably carry 10 passengers on a 36-hour transcontinental flight. When we consider modern passenger aircraft, the concept of moving people comfortably over long Read Article

SPICE Simulator Online Adaptation to Your Expertise

SPICE Simulator Online Adaptation to Your Expertise Some of us have a habit of trying to be experts at everything. The one thing I have had to learn time and again, whether in software or hardware, is that there is no need to constantly reinvent the wheel. When you need to get an idea of how your device operates, you don’t need to build a simulation program from scratch. Thankfully, there are a number of tools that make it easy to simulate the behavior of your circuit, and you don’t need to be an Read Article

1:51 New Components Panel Watch Video

28 Rigid-Flex Support for Multi-Board Designs Watch Video

24 Multi-Board Object Smart Mates Watch Video

Choosing Replacement Components With an Integrated Library

Choosing Replacement Components With an Integrated Library Much as we would like, designing a new product or system is not without its hiccups. Designs, functionality, and component changes may be made at the last minute, forcing design modification or component replacement. Replacement circuit components or replacement can require thorough knowledge of your circuit boards. Repairing a circuit board is often more than finding a circuit breaking. Electrical equipment and service panel tinkering can go so Read Article

Don’t Let Your Unrouted Nets be Traces to Nowhere

Don’t Let Your Unrouted Nets be Traces to Nowhere Have you ever seen one of those movies where a train is barreling down the track and starts to cross a bridge only to realize further down the line that the tracks run out and the bridge goes nowhere? That is a scary situation and only an alert train driver, formerly known as a train engineer, can prevent a catastrophe. Although, not as catastrophic, having unrouted nets on your board can wreak havoc to your PCB’s operation. Unrouted nets are Read Article