What Precautions Should be Taken for PCB Design Tool (Altium)

When it comes to the safety measures, then while designing the PCB, it is crucial to have such. Electric machines and power electronics experiments or creating printed circuit boards involves voltage, power, and electric current and energy quantities.

PCB design, which engineers take it granted as to make the product free from every minor problem. Electrocution occurs, or in the case of PCB design, printed circuit boards which are consist of many small components must be handled carefully as it can lead to severe damage.

Principles of the precautions while dealing with electrical experiments: 

  • Electric power and experimental setup must be done carefully
  • Always make sure the work environment is suitable for the electrical experiments
  • Clothing and personal requirements should be in priority

Altium Designer is the most popular PCB design tools, best high speed, and interactive routing means that you can design high density and high speed printed circuit boards. But for the PCB designers, some guidelines should be followed very dedicatedly.

Here are the top five guidelines while using the Altium Designer for the PCB design.

  • Component Placement: 

This is the stage of the PCB layout process where everything is considered, which is needed for the board. But it can be challenging how you place components in order of connectors, power circuits, and precision circuits, and so on. But keep in mind a few guidelines like be sure about the orientation of similar components. Avoid placing the components on the solder side of the board. At last, an organization is done, which should be like place all your surface mount devices components on the same side of the board. The manufacturer needs a new process to assemble the board.

  • Placing Power, Ground, and Signal Traces: 

According to the guidelines, it is recommended that you always place traces as shortly and directly as possible between components as PCB consists of many layers. Hence, guidelines become more complex as the layers increases. For more complex ones, you should follow the PCB design guidelines that are particular to the application used.

  • Separating Things: 

Make sure about separating the power ground and control ground for each power supply stage. Placement is crucial, and if you have a ground plane in the middle, then be sure to place the small impedance path to reduce the risk of any power interference. Try to have your analog ground crossed only by analog line to reduce the capacitive coupling.

  • Thermal Relieve:

Some designers tell you to use a thermal relief pattern for any via or hole which is connected to the ground or power plane. Thermal relief is also very crucial for the soldering process. In addition to the thermal comfort, you can add teardrops which reduce the mechanical stress.

  • Checking the Layout: 

It is recommended to start with your ERC (electrical rules check) and design rules check (DRC). You should run a design rule check at the end of the design phase while preparing for the manufacturing. If you are using the right designing software, then you can run checks throughout the design process, which allows you to detect potential problems earlier.

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