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Altium 365: Release to Manufacturing

Altium Designer

| March 23, 2020

About Author

About Author

PCB Design Tools for Electronics Design and DFM. Information for EDA Leaders.

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This is the DRC You Need to Add I was impressed that, right out of the box, the stock Design Rule Checks (DRCs) in my copy of Altium 20 pretty much covered all the bases on how to make a “standard” Printed Circuit Board (PCB). Altium defaults to “10 mil” rules, which means that the standard spacing and widths of copper tracks is 10 mils. What's more, most of the other spacings also default to 10 mils; pads to tracks, through-holes to other pads or vias. The exceptions being the Read Article

Know the Power Dissipation Understanding power dissipation of an individual component, an electrical block, or even the whole electronics system is essential for electronics engineers. It is important not only to avoid exceeding the maximum limits of components but also to calculate unknown parameters in input or output sides because power dissipation is related to system voltage and current. In this article, I describe my practices for analyzing power dissipation in Read Article

Insertion Loss is a Complex Issue: John Coonrod is Here to Explain It The OnTrack Podcast welcomes John Coonrod back to the show. John is Technical Marketing Manager at Rogers Corporation and a senior engineering professional with a rich background in PCB design, fabrication, processing, and modeling. John also has extensive experience with circuit materials, making him the ideal candidate for the topic of today’s podcast: insertion loss. Listen to the Podcast: Download this episode (right click and save) Watch the Read Article

US Department of Transportation Seeking Alternatives to GPS GPS-capable devices range from your phone to your smartwatch; simply type in your destination and follow the directions. Simple, right? According to the Washington Post, we should all stop using GPS as it’s ruining the navigation centers of our brains. Despite the neurological effects on perception and judgment, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) aims to find alternatives to GPS to provide redundancy. What started as a defense initiative Read Article

Low Noise, Low EMI Voltage Regulator A couple of months ago, I purchased an entry-level cinematography camera: the Black Magic Ursa Mini Pro 4.6K G2. I'm planning to use it for project videos, factory tours, and trade show interviews with it mostly being mounted on a shoulder rig. In addition to the camera itself, this requires a surprising number of devices to be powered. To save having lots of batteries to keep track of, I want to run everything off the main camera battery Read Article

Voltage and Current waveforms on a Series - Terminated Transmission Line In both of our books, Right the First Time, A Practical Handbook on High Speed PCB and System Design, Volumes 1 and 2, as well as in our on-site and public courses, we talk about the value of a series-terminated transmission line. With this type of transmission line, no power is being used unless the line is being charged up. This enables a lot of computing with a minimum of power. But having a clear understanding of how this type of line Read Article

Planning for the Future with Cirris Systems and Altium Technological advancements have been a hallmark of the past few decades, from the widespread adoption of internet technology to the smartphones and wireless devices we rely on every day to stay connected. While few could have predicted the speed at which technology has grown since 1984, back when Salt Lake City’s Cirris Systems was a startup company, designing products by hand on a humble kitchen table. Since then, they’ve become a major leader Read Article

Git Tagging and Git for Hardware Development in Altium Designer The concept of revisioning in electronics design has stayed fairly standard across the industry. A revision will typically consist of a letter and sometimes contain a number. There are many other revision schemes which people have experimented with, but, from my experience, the standard letter revision seems to be prevalent within our industry. One question that I have always asked myself is: What happened to all the revisions in between? I Read Article

12V DC Uninterruptible Power Supply I live in a rural village that tends to have intermittent power when there are high winds or storms. Because of this, my computers, servers, and network equipment are all on relatively low-cost, uninterruptible power supplies. These all run on sealed lead acid batteries and are not an overly efficient way to power a DC device such as a Raspberry Pi or internet router as the incoming mains. AC charges a DC battery, which then creates AC power Read Article

Altium 365 Library Migration: How it Works and Why You Should Use It Your libraries are the cornerstone of your PCB design projects. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to load up custom footprints, access schematic symbols, or much else for your PCB projects. When you need to share projects or existing component data with your team, what’s the easiest way to get the data you need without creating long email chains? Before working with Altium 365, we were stuck using tools like Slack, email, an FTP server, Dropbox Read Article

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