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Implementing Atmel QTouch with Altium Designer Implementing Atmel QTouch with Altium Designer Increasingly, I am being asked how to go about designing a touch application using Atmel's QTouch technology. I’ve also had a lot of people ask if it’s possible to develop such an application on a NanoBoard® 3000. Well it certainly is, and I thought I would take a moment and map out the overall aspects and options of implementing an Atmel QTouch design, including development. With Altium Designer® 10, we introduced support for the automatic Read Article
Multi-board design projects in Altium Designer Multi-board design projects in Altium Designer I was working with a customer recently who had two PCBs that were related. In this multi-circuit boards design project he wanted to work from a single schematic package, yet have a subset of the schematics populate two different printed boards. It’s enough of a scenario, and it’s reasonably simple to achieve in Altium Designer®. Here’s how. At the time of publishing, Altium currently supports only one PCB per PCB Project. In other words, each PCB Read Article
How to use Schematic CAD Drawings for Cable Assemblies: Part 4 How to use Schematic CAD for Harness Drawings and Cable Assemblies: Part 4 Sainesh Solanki continues his blog series on using Schematic CAD tools for cable and wiring harness design. In this 4th installment, Sainesh discusses how to clearly lay out the cable assembly drawing on the schematic page, along with the electrical schematic for generating a netlist for testing and DRC later on. Read on to find out how you can be using schematic CAD drawings for cable assemblies. Doing the cable assembly drawing in a Printed Read Article
How to Route DDR3 Memory and CPU fan-out How to Route DDR3 Memory and CPU fan-out It's becoming more and more inevitable that board designers have to do high edge rate (high speed) PCB designs when working with microcontrollers. With the power of CPU's like the Freescale iMX6 multi-core ARM device family, but at very low "cost per MIP", it's more and more desirable to use devices like this to enable rich software and user experiences in your product. But using these super-micro added memory controller bears with it the Read Article
How to use Schematic CAD Drawings for Cable Assemblies: Part 2 How to use Schematic CAD Drawings for Cable Assemblies: Part 2 The need to design cable assembly drawings often falls to the electronics design team, but for many, the use of high-cost dedicated cabling design software is simply out of reach and overkill. In this second installment of the cable design blog series, Sainesh Solanki reveals the needed design elements of the components used in great cable assembly drawings (you can access part 1 here). These schematic symbols and their associated parameters and Read Article
How to use Schematic CAD Drawings for Cable Assemblies: Part 1 How to use Schematic CAD Drawings for Cable Assemblies: Part 1 The need for computer-aided cable assembly drawings often falls to the electronics design team, but for many, the use of high-cost dedicated cable design software is simply out of reach and overkill. The solution? Use the Schematic Editor! Most electronic engineers work on products that require Printed Circuit Board designs to be interconnected by cable assemblies. As you might have already noticed, some dedicated tools that primarily focus on Read Article
Software development streams - the natural evolution of our business Software development streams - the natural evolution of our business The software engineering industry is a bit of an ugly duckling when it comes to release cycles. For reasons of traceability, validation, verification, and marketing, most software packages are built to a certain level of completeness and then released with much fanfare. But is this how we should do things in the future? Software development streams - the natural evolution of our business The embedded software engineering industry is a bit of an Read Article
Design custom NanoBoard peripheral boards – Pt2 Design custom NanoBoard peripheral boards – Pt2 Last month, we discussed how to get started on custom peripheral board designs by building a template from the PB30 reference design. This month, with an example prototype peripheral board in hand, we look at the process of registration using the 1-Wire bus EPROM which holds the board’s identity and allows Altium Designer® to automatically configure FPGA projects that use the new board. Design custom NanoBoard® peripheral boards – Pt2 Part 2 Read Article
Design Custom NanoBoard Peripheral Boards Design Custom NanoBoard Peripheral Boards If you want to add custom hardware functionality to your NanoBoard®, why not make your own add-on Peripheral Board? This two part Tech Tip details the easy way to create your own custom board to use with Altium Designer®. Part 1: Creating your own peripheral board template In this first installment of this two-part tech-tip, we’ll look at how to go about getting the PCB design under way, starting with the PB30 reference design and modifying it to Read Article
Design Tip: Using the PCB Release View to Automate Output Job File Processing Automate Output Job File Processing with PCB Release View in Altium Deisgner There are many ways to peel an orange - so to speak - and some are better than others. And when it comes to generating fabrication and assembly outputs from your designs this adage holds true. In this PCB design tip, FAE Dave Cousineau describes a re-usable, highly effective way of managing output jobs using the PCB design release capability of Altium Designer®. Using Output Job files to define and store the necessary documentation needs for any Read Article
How Many Interfaces Does It Take to Complete a PCB Design? PCB Design Environment Migration: How Many Interfaces Does It Take to Complete a PCB Design? Ever find yourself juggling multiple interfaces just to accomplish one singular goal of your PCB design? Learn how easy it can be to design a PCB with a unified design environment in Altium Designer®. That’s a trick question, it only takes one. But for many engineers, designing a PCB often involves learning multiple sets of software just to accomplish one final goal. And even then, there's no guarantee that a multi-tool chain approach will Read Article
New Features You’ll Only See in Altium Designer 16 New Features You’ll Only See in Altium Designer 16 We’ve packed many new features in Altium Designer®, allowing you to get your designs done faster than ever. Check out our top 3, and register now for a free webinar to see them all! It’s that time of the year again, and we’ve got a major update planned for Altium . Our focus has always been on providing you with the most productive and efficient design tool that allows you to tap into your true design potential. This release is no exception to Read Article
5 (More) Productivity-Boosting Features in Altium Designer You Need to Start Using Now 5 (More) Productivity-Boosting Features in Altium Designer You Need to Start Using Now We’re back with another series of productivity-boosting features for you to take advantage of in Altium Designer®. If you missed us last week, check out our first blog post for the other 5 productivity enhancers we’ve covered. I’ve included some great time saving and workflow enhancement features in this article that will help to automate many of those tedious, repetitive tasks that we have to perform in our designs. Read on to learn more! Cross Read Article
5 Time-Saving Productivity Features in Altium Designer You Need to Be Using Now 5 PCB Designer 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 who 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
Open Source OLED Watch Open Source OLED Watch It's a great time to be an engineer and a designer. In keeping with the theme of Petr Tosovsky's Open Source Projects in our Altium Designer blog, we found another Open Source Hardware (OSHW) project which was so cool we wanted to share it with the community. In this blog, Ben Jordan interviews 4th year computer engineering student Jared Sanson about his awesome OLED watch (smart watch), which he designed the electronics for in Altium Designer® Read Article
Power nets management - take 2 Power nets management - take 2 My recent blog post about Power nets management attracted a large number of very interesting and very informative comments. It has been heart warming, for me, to see so many people getting involved in the discussion. All these contributions have helped me appreciate how vast and intricate the domain of power management can be. My recent blog post about Power nets management attracted a large number of very interesting and very informative Read Article
Open Source Hardware & PCB Projects in Altium Designer Open Source Hardware & PCB Projects in Altium Designer Article translated by Google, and edited in English by Ben Jordan. More and more engineers and PCB designers are getting involved in the rising tide of open source hardware projects. There are some really cool ones out there, and in this blog, FAE and consultant Petr Tošovský from Retry S.R.O. in Czech Republic highlights a few that caught his eye, and I ask the important question at the end - so read and answer with your thoughts! When you’re Read Article