Whitepapers

Creating Unusual Shapes in Altium Designer - The Donut

Creating Unusual Shapes in Altium Designer - The Donut Read Article

Meeting the Challenges of Wearable Devices with Rigid-Flex PCB Design

Meeting the Challenges of Wearable Devices with Rigid-Flex PCB Design Learn more about Rigid Flex challenges and opportunities. Read Article

Using the Live Drill Table Improves PCB Production

Using the Live Drill Table Improves PCB Production The drill drawing layer provides the details such as the location of the holes to be drilled, the hole sizes, the hole tolerances, and other available pertinent information. This layer can ultimately aid the process of board fabrication. The ability to see a live drill table for PCB Design while designing a printed circuit board can help speed up the process by eliminating extra steps. This functionality can provide the ability to catch a Read Article

Design Data Management Part 2 — The Supply Chain

Design Data Management Part 2 — The Supply Chain Learn how to verify PCB component availability and pricing directly from your design environment in Altium Designer. To learn more about this topic please see the full solution - Ensure Component Availability at Design Time - at Altium.com. Read Article

Team Collaboration & PCB Design

Team Collaboration & PCB Design There was a time when once a circuit design was completed, it was handed off to “the PCB designer”, who then produced the board layout. Now, with products as complex as tablets, smartphones and even electronic games, there is no single person involved with the PCB. Products are designed by teams of experts and without the ability to effectively collaborate, time is wasted and errors introduced. There was a time when once a concept design was Read Article

ActiveRoute for Altium Designer

ActiveRoute for Altium Designer Learn how to significantly improve the efficiency of your PCB routing process with guided routing technology in Altium Designer. To learn more about this topic please see the full solution - Enhance Your Routing Efficiency with ActiveRoute - at Altium.com. Read Article

Using Neck-Down Simplifies BGA Routing

Using Neck-Down Simplifies BGA Routing To learn more about this topic please see the full solution - Simplify BGA Routing by Using Track Neck Downs - at Altium.com. Read Article

Creating 3D Component Bodies in a Footprint Library

Creating 3D Component Bodies in a Footprint Library Learn how to transfer accurate ECAD design data between MCAD and ECAD worlds to ensure your PCB design fits into its final assembly with 3D component bodies. To learn more about this topic please see the full solution - Creating Accurate 3D Component Bodies - at Altium.com. Read Article

Storage Manager File Safety Guaranteed

Storage Manager File Safety Guaranteed Learn how the ECAD storage manager in Altium Designer can help you to recover previous versions of a PCB design project and easily access all of your electronics design projects. How many times has this happened to you? You’re working on a project, when all of a sudden, you make some significant modification to it accidentally, and then save it, losing your previous work. In this document, we present a feature called Storage Manager a method that Read Article

The New Age of PCB Documentation

The New Age of PCB Documentation Learn how to eliminate the stress of manual PCB documentation with automated creation of drawings based on the details of your PCB design. To learn more about this topic please see the full solution - How to Eliminate the Manual Documentation Process - at Altium.com. Read Article

Re-using Circuits with Snippets Shaves Design Time

Re-using Circuits with Snippets Shaves Design Time Learn how to make reuse of circuits with snippets in Altium Designer to save time on your design process. Often, a commonly used circuit, such as a power supply that has met UL or EMI certification, may appear in many designs. Or, a circuit such as an output buffer, might be reproduced several times on one PDB. The design can be accelerated by grabbing those circuit layouts and re-using them, both on a single board design in the case of the Read Article

Navigating the Perils of Design Review

Navigating the Perils of Design Review Design reviews cause shivers to run up the spine of even the most seasoned engineer. No matter how much time, eﬀort, and checking has been invested, there is still a fear that something might have been overlooked. This paper will touch on some simple filtering and highlight techniques to help visually isolate critical components and nets...all in an eﬀort to make your next design review just a little less stressful. INTRODUCTION Ensuring PCB Read Article

Reverse Engineering Project Libraries

Reverse Engineering Project Libraries Outsourcing has become the de-facto solution for companies seeking to cut costs and increase their profit margins. Rather than consuming their own resources on a particular task, companies farm it out to other firms that specializes in that particular area, leaving them to focus on what they do best. New product design often gets contracted out to separate design firms. If that’s you — your company outsources PCB design or your company is a PCB Read Article

Implementing Touch Sensors

Implementing Touch Sensors Learn how to design a reliable alternative to traditional mechanical switches with capacitive touch sensor technology in Altium Designer. Capacitive touch sensor technology offers an inexpensive and highly reliable alternative to the traditional mechanical switches that are used in electronics control interfaces. Manually creating or resizing a touch sensor’s complex vendor/technology- specific patterns can be both difficult and time-consuming Read Article

Area Sensitive Part Of The Board

Area Sensitive Part Of The Board It’s that phase of the project when you’re about to hand over a development released product to production. From the development perspective, everything, from designs, parts, models, BOMs, and documentation, are all in their release state. It’s a time that calls for a true celebration after weeks of sleepless nights to finish the design on time and within budget. Then you get the flash back with few what-if questions; did sourcing get the new Read Article

Streamlining the Altium Designer User Experience

Streamlining the Altium Designer User Experience Learn how to streamline your Altium Designer experience with shortcut keys, pcb workflow automation, and a customizable workspace. Modern CAD tools employ an ever growing collection of features and functionality. One of the leaders in this area is Altium Designer, which provides users with a single, unified package that includes Schematic capture, PCB layout, Native 3D PCB, Signal Integrity, SPICE simulation, Embedded Software development, and Read Article

Breaking the Visual Barrier

Breaking the Visual Barrier How many PCB design hours have you wasted trying to decipher a legacy project you just inherited? How about wading through thousands of connection lines, trying to determine the best component placement? It can be disheartening, to say the least. Fortunately, there’s a better way. Let’s take a look at how you can use Net Color overrides to provide visual enhancements for both the schematic and PCB, to give you visual control over your design Read Article