Customize Your PCB Drill Sizes With Altium Designer Every PCB will need some holes, vias, slots, and other features that are defined in a PCB layout. These features need to be reflected in fabrication documents, and designers need tools to help them au...
What is Schematic Capture? In simple terms, schematic capture is the process of converting a paper design into an electronic representation that software tools, such as a circuit simulation or PCB design packages, can process. ...
Efficient Polygon Practices in Altium Designer Creating, Deleting, and modifying the polygon pours on your board is something you do everyday but are you doing it in the quickest most efficient way? The copper pours you place on your board can mak...
Should You Use Power MOSFETs in Series? Power MOSFETs enable a huge range of electronic systems, specifically in situations where BJTs are not useful or efficient. MOSFETs can be used in high current systems in parallel arrangements, but wh...
Best Practices for Using DNI/DNP Entries in Your PCB BOM If you’ve ever looked at the BOM for a reference design or an open-source project, you may have seen a comment in some of the entries in your BOM. This comment is either “DNP” (do not populate) or “DN...
The Anatomy of Your Schematic Netlist, Ports, and Net Names Take a moment to think about your schematic and your PCB layout: what if you had to manually draw out wires and nets in a PCB after you’ve already created them in the schematic? Electronics schematics...
Taking a Modular PCB Design Approach in Altium Designer PCB design is rarely discussed in terms of designing functional blocks or as connecting modules with different functionality. Simple designs can usually be designed without considering how your PCB la...
How to Design and Fabricate a 4-Layer PCB Stackup with Altium Designer Every PCB design project starts with a stackup that has clearly defined signal and plane layers. Make sure you choose the right stackup for your design and make sure you design your stackup to comply ...
Follow Mixed Signal PCB Design Guidelines With the Best CAD Tools Mixed-signal PCB design guidelines require satisfying basic digital and analog design rules and preventing signal interference. Mixed-signal boards can be difficult to lay out without the right PCB de...
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 sc...
How Total Harmonic Distortion Affects Your Power System It would be nice if, at least in the US, the power that came from the wall was truly noise free. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and although a power system can appear to output a clean sine wave...
Overlapping Planes in Your Mixed-Signal PCB Layout Power planes, or at least polygon pour used for power, are indispensable in modern PCBs, and it’s doubtful that digital systems as we know them would exist without the ability to split power nets into...
