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Getting Started

Just getting started with PCB Design and Altium? These resources help you get acquainted with all you need to know!

Pandemic PCB Prototyping: Building Electronics From Your Living Room It feels like everyone is writing an article these days about how they’re managing (or not managing) with stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19 restrictions. At the time of writing, California (where I am based) has the highest number of cases over any other state in the United States. To combat the pandemic, most non-essential businesses have been closed or open in a limited fashion. This means that folks who are able to work from home (e.g Read Article

Altium 365 Getting Started User Guide - Available Now Hi Everyone, A month ago, I announced the release of the Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide. This week we are following up with the release of another helpful guide: Altium 365 Getting Started User Guide. The Altium 365 cloud platform offers the most connected experience for PCB design and realization with direct access from Altium Designer or any web browser. All active subscribers can access Altium 365 to unlock powerful functionality Read Article

Altium Designer Viewer Mode Datasheet Securely view, print, and cross-probe single documents or entire projects in one comprehensive interface. Download PDF

Identifying Minimum PCB Trace Spacing and Width in Altium Designer Taking the time to set up routing rules to govern the minimum trace spacing and trace width for PCB layout can be tedious. Many designers would prefer to jump in and start trace routing without going through this setup process first. This can be dangerous though as you may inadvertently route a trace routing at the wrong width, or pack your routing in so tightly that you don’t have the room to make any width corrections later on. The more rigid Read Article

Getting Started with PDN Analyzer To learn more about this topic please see the full solution - Getting Started with PDN Analyzer - at Altium.com. Download PDF

How to Create a PCB Schematic | Altium Designer There’s an important step creating your PCB layout: How to create a PCB schematic? You might feel overwhelmed with all of the options, but don’t worry! Whether you’ve got decades of experience in your pocket or just starting your design or engineering career, your design begins with schematic capture. Below is a schematic capture and creation tutorial in Altium Designer, a top rated PCB editor program. If you want to skip to different steps in Read Article

Getting Started with PCB Design NOTE: This Guide was written for Altium Designer 18. For the latest Altium Designer has to offer, please visit https://my.altium.com/altium-designer/getting-started. This tutorial will start with a sketch of a circuit and will take you through the process of representing the circuit as a schematic, implementing the circuit as a printed circuit board, and generating the outputs required for board fabrication. TOPICS IN THIS SOLUTION CREATING THE Download PDF

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Active and Passive RFID Technologies When I’m designing a new PCB or product one of the hardest parts for me is choosing exactly which components I should use. It seems like every technology out there now has a different configuration to achieve the best performance. Even when you’re dealing with a fairly straightforward technology like radio frequency identification (RFID) circuit board there are a lot of flavors to choose from. While every type of RFID design label uses an active Read Article

The Best Multilayer PCB Design Tips for Circuit Board Layout Doing something new for the first time can be difficult. Baby birds probably don’t appreciate being pushed out of the nest and teenagers are nervous before their first real date. I, personally, was scared to death on my first date. However, I’m glad that I took that first step because that milestone was a great moment in my life. Designing your first multilayer PCB board may not be quite like a first date, but it's still a critical step for a PCB Read Article

DFM Guidebook Download PDF

Level Up Your Design Skills - Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide We are happy to announce the release of the new Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide. Whether you are new to Altium Designer or you want to brush up on some topics, the Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide will take you from a beginner to a master in PCB design. This is only the beginning! This guide will be updated with new information based on user feedback. Let’s first go over the contents of the guide. Read Article

What is Multi-board Design? Learn more about what is multi-board design and how to use native 3D design with ECAD MCAD collaboration aids complex PCB layout. Read Article

The Search for the All-in-One Design Data Management System In this article we discuss the pain points of using a single design data management system over linking many together. Read Article

A Guide to Challenging Projects Starting a project? Here's an expert advise from Mark Harris to get you through challenging design projects. Read this blog and see if this method will work for you. Read Article

Automated Mirroring Between Concord Pro and Your Git Server You can create a Git server mirror of your Altium Concord Pro server using the Altium 365 platform. This gives you a simple way to create a backup for projects from an on-premises Concord Pro instance. Read Article

Temperature Sensor Project: Intro In this project we will build a range of PCBs which will cover all the temperature sensor types and circuits to implement them. Read Article

Modeling Capacitor Impedance Vs. Frequency Using an Excel Spreadsheet As noted in an earlier article, based on class notes from our two-day design course, getting the power subsystem design correct is the most challenging aspect of today’s high-speed PCB design process. A major aspect of this process is modeling the power supply to ensure that it will function properly in the end product. A critical part of this modeling effort focuses on being able to model capacitor impedance vs frequency. This is simple enough Read Article