Whitepapers

Top 10 DFM Problems That Affect Every Design

Top 10 DFM Problems That Affect Every Design Learn how to prevent the top 10 Design for Manufacturability (DFM) issues in your next PCB design project with these strategies. As a PCB designer, you manage a variety of different requirements and expectations.There are electrical, functional, and mechanical aspects to consider. In addition, the PCB has to be produced in a timely manner, with the best possible quality, at the lowest possible cost. And through all of these requirements, you also Read Article

Simplify Routing With Pin, Part, And Diff-Pair Swapping

Simplify Routing With Pin, Part, And Diff-Pair Swapping When placing parts for a PCB design, the placement often leads to connections that will cross over each other. Although vias to other layers or slightly longer trace routing can be used to address a small number of crossover connections, a large number of crossovers, like those in the figure below, can make routing extremely difficult and time consuming. For more complex routing with larger numbers of crossovers, PCB designers typically employ Read Article

The Final Step: Online Design Rule Check

The Final Step: Online Design Rule Check PCB designers begin with a set of physical requirements and specifications regarding the board layout. Certain factors such as the clearance between components and other primitives, establishment of electrical connection, size requirements of traces and vias, are just a few of the requirements that must be followed when designing a PCB. The ever-increasing complexity of boards has made it nearly impossible to carry out this verification manually Read Article

Snippets Part B: Linking Your Schematic and PCB Snippets

Snippets Part B: Linking Your Schematic and PCB Snippets The key to successfully linking circuitry on a single schematic sheet with circuitry in a PCB design, including the components and routing, is in the designation of the components. When creating the two mating snippets in the schematic and the PCB, you need to create unique designators for the components. This paper illustrates the key to success in linking the two schematic and Printed Circuit Board snippets together, and will make reuse of Read Article

Hierarchical Schematic Designs: Organization Is Golden

Hierarchical Schematic Designs: Organization Is Golden Save time and eliminate the headaches associated with multi-sheet design by using hierarchical multi-sheet schematic designs. To learn more about this topic please see the full solution - Hierarchical Schematic Designs: Organization Is Golden - at Altium.com. Read Article

3D PDF Capabilities Support Seamless Communication

3D PDF Capabilities Support Seamless Communication It’s diﬃcult to communicate aspects of a printed circuit board design eﬀectively, using only text and static images. This is especially true in today’s world of increasingly complex PCB design. However, the Altium Designer3D PDF flip book export capabilities take advantage of the native 3D format, as well as the ability to embed this format into PDF documents. Thisexport format grants users the ability to share a fully-rendered, interactive, 3D Read Article

Import Wizard

PCB Importers: Import Wizard One task that has always proven difficult is moving electronic product designs from one design environment to another. Whether you’ve changed design tools or acquired designs from another company, there are a number of challenges involved in moving a project from one software platform to another, while maintaining design consistency. It’s a difficult and time-consuming process, but it has to be done. INTRODUCTION If a PCB designer has a design in Read Article

Designing For Testability (DFT)

Designing For Testability (DFT) The overall cost to produce a completed printed circuit board PCB can be broken down into several basic categories: The cost of manufacturing the blank PCB, the cost of components, the assembly costs, and the cost of test. That last one, the cost of testing the completed board, can comprise as much as 25% to 30% of the total cost of producing the product. SUMMARY Designing for testability in a PCB design (DFT) is a critical step in the design for Read Article

3D Measuring in Altium Designer

3D Measuring in Altium Designer The Altium Designer PCB editor gives designers the ability to display their board in glorious 3D measuring. With the help of Microsoft DirectX, the PCB editor allows the complete visualization of printed circuit boards, completely loaded with all of their components. You can then view the loaded board, zoom in, rotate it, and thoroughly examine it in full, three-dimensional detail. You can view it from any angle or position that you choose, or Read Article

3D Modeling Has Changed Electronic Design Forever

3D Modeling Has Changed Electronic Design Forever Learn how to easily ensure that your board fits its mechanical enclosure right the first time with Native 3D PCB editing capabilities. To learn more about this topic please see the full solution - BOM Customization and 3D Modeling - at Altium.com. Read Article

Adopting Signal Integrity In Your High Speed Design Process

Adopting Signal Integrity In Your High Speed Design Process With switching speeds in TTL and newer logic families being fast enough to process data at Mbps and Gbps data rates, high speed design techniques are now critical for nearly every PCB designer. As rise times in digital signals have become faster, designers must either make their interconnects shorter or devise some important design strategies to prevent signal integrity problems. Today’s engineers need a complete toolset for signal integrity Read Article

How To Improve Your Productivity With Added Screen Real Estate

How To Improve Your Productivity With Added Screen Real Estate In electronics design, there’s an inherent need to increase productivity whenever possible. To that end, electronics designers also tend to have an inherent affinity for technology that will help them to do that. They’re willing to invest money in the most up-to-date tools, training, and other bells and whistles, if it means saving time and money in the long run. However, there’s another area that’s often overlooked--and which doesn’t cost very Read Article

The Basics of PDN for the PCB Designer

The Basics of PDN for the PCB Designer When PCB designers hear the term “PDN”, or “Power Distribution Network”, it might conjure up notions of bode plots, black magic, and other mysterious, scary things. In reality, the goal of the PDN is as straightforward as are most of the PCB design aspects that aﬀect PDN performance. In this paper we’ll explain the various aspects of most PDN designs and how the PCB design software can inﬂuence them. OVERALL GOAL: SUFFICIENT CURRENT AND VOLTAGE Read Article

Standardize Your Component Libraries with Component Templates (Vault Component Template)

Standardize Your Component Libraries with Component Templates (Vault Component Template) Read Article

Facilitating Physical and Electrical PCB Design Comparison

Facilitating Physical and Electrical PCB Design Comparison The increasing demand for smaller, more capable electronics has been a major driving factor behind the development of more complex, densely packed PCBs. Although Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software is regularly updated to handle the added complexity of PCB board design, board designers must still review and approve any and all design modifications made by the software. Comparing physical and electrical PCB design through a review cycle Read Article

Unifying Your Component Management Workflow (Design Data Mgmt)

Unifying Your Component Management Workflow (Design Data Mgmt) Unify component management for better design data management. No more main components on backorder, or worse yet, in obsolescence! This Altium whitepaper can help. To learn more about this topic please see the full solution - Unifying Your Component Management Workflow - at Altium.com. Read Article

DC Analysis of a PDN: Essentials for the Digital Designer

DC Analysis of a PDN: Essentials for the Digital Designer PDN analysis is an essential element in any digital designer's toolbox, providing valuable insight into how to reduce a design's size and complexity while improving performance. To learn more about this topic please see the full solution - DC Analysis of a PDN - at Altium.com. Read Article