Altium Designer is irrefutably one of the commonest sophisticated Printed Circuit Board PCB design tools in the engineering market currently. It is built and supplied by Altium Limited, Above all, it and it comes with several features, like a schematic and auto-router. Altium Designer software comes with high-powered tools for performing various circuit design activities, such as Schematic, circuit circulation, PCB design, and others.
Besides, you can customize the Altium Designer workspace to carry out various user requirements. Welcome to this tutorial of PCB design and realization in Altium's high-end software package. The tutorial will help you break into the entire process of making a PCB- from setting up a design project to output documentation. To begin with, Altium is a unified PCB design software package that hosts numerous design tools under one roof.
Altium Designer the latest version of Altium- symbolizes many years of innovation and improvement devoted to building a truly integrated design tool. For this reason, it allows users tutorial altium designer 17 free download efficiently utilize all the features of the circuit board design process features. Remarking the excellent balance between control and ease of application, Altium has emerged as one of the most popular PCB design tools.
Altium developers have developed an intuitive interface, putting the power of the software at users' fingertips. In this subheading, you will learn how to download the Altium Designer software, set up the design tutorial altium designer 17 free download, and place components on the Schematic. At the same time, you will also learn how to add PCB, compile the project to check for errors, create a new PCB, and output documentation.
Learn how to download a free version of Altium Designer, install and license it on your computer by following these steps. Before you begin the download process, you need to sign up for a free user account on the Altium website.
Join the Altium community of engineers and designers through this link. After signing up with the Altium community, login to your account through this link. Have a closer look at the features and advantages of Altium Designer before you proceed to the next step.
After approving the components and benefits of Altium Designer, you can download the Altium software from the Download Page. When you have finished downloading the Altium Designer software, you should run it on your computer by pressing the Yes button on the pop-up window. Consequently, tutorial altium designer 17 free download will see a page welcoming you to the Installer.
Hit the Next button to continue. Next, navigate to the Design Functionality to choose your preferred functionality and press the tab labeled Next. You have successfully finished the download and installation process. If it is your first time to run Altium Designers on your device, a License Management Panel will show up, implying that you are using an invalid license.
Sign in to your Altium account that you created earlier to access a list of valid permissions. For instance, the project template, Multivibrator. For the purpose of the next steps, you need to add a schematic sheet to your project, as shown below. In the first place, you should set up the right document options, such as the sheet size and Snap, before you begin drawing your PCB. The elements that you will add to the PCB appear as schematic symbols in the design capture process.
You can either:. Unlike other PCB design tools, you can place library components from existing libraries In Altium, tutorial altium designer 17 free download as:. Those in the current project- use the components of a library belonging to a particular project in any running project. In this case, you should install the libraries in the Installed section within the Available Libraries panel.
To access the dialog, hit the Libraries tab on the Libraries window. If you are unable to view the forum, navigate to the Panels, and click Libraries. Using the Place tab- position and press to insert the component floating on your cursor. Tutorial altium designer 17 free download placing it, right-click to leave the placement mode.
Double-clicking- by double-clicking the Components tab in the window's component section, you will see them floating on your cursor.
You need to position it appropriately and press to insert it. Then right-click to leave the placement mode. Clicking and dragging- you can also place components on the Schematic from the Libraries panel by clicking and dragging the Schematic element. Tutorial altium designer 17 free download, you should hold your cursor down and release it to put your component.
Right-click the component and choose Place to float it on your cursor. Then position it appropriately and press to insert. When the Explorer window floats on your workspace, it will quickly fade to enable you to view the schematic drop components. Right-click to leave the placement status. Click and drag- You can also tutorial altium designer 17 free download and remove tutorial altium designer 17 free download from the Explorer window and place them on the Schematic.
You should hold your cursor down and release it to set the component. Tutorial altium designer 17 free download on your internet speed, you might experience a short delay before placing the parts. Place them to create a schematic similar to the diagram below. Remember, the collapsible parts comprise tips on designing the placement process, which is more effective than developing after placement.
You have successfully positioned the components. However, you should widely space the components as illustrated above to create enough space for wiring all the component pins. You require adequate spacing since you cannot position wires underneath pins to access them beyond the wires.
Otherwise, you will link all the pins to the wire. When moving components, press-and-hold them and relocate them by dragging the mouse. The first thing to do in adding a PCB is to wiring your board to create connectivity between the different parts. Luckily, the wiring process is tutorial altium designer 17 free download. As an illustration, refer to the diagram below. Then Finally, press and hold to relocate positioned components. You can also press ctrl, click, and hold at the same time to move the parts together with the wires.
Every set of arts that you have linked is known as a net. For instance, a net can consist of base Q1, pin R1, and C1. Altium naturally assigns every net a label based on the type of component pins. Before you relocate your schematic design to the circuit board editor, you should make a blank PCB, label, and save it. There are several settings of the blank PCB that you need tutorial altium designer 17 free download modify before moving your schematic design. They include defining the origin, changing the imperial units to metric, choosing an appropriate snap grid, resizing the PCB shape to the recommended size, and arranging the design layers.
The best way to delimit the shape of a non-rectangular PCB is by placing tracks on the keep-out layer. It would be best to move your Schematic directly from the schematic editor to the circuit board editor.
You do not have to create another netlist document to facilitate the transfer. Alternatively, you can go to the circuit board editor and click on Design, then choose Import Changes Multi-vibrator. If you use one of the above commands, you will compile your design and generate some orders, like:.
List every schematic component and its tutorial altium designer 17 free download footprints. When you implement the ECOs, the application will try to find each impression in the libraries or Content Vault and position them in the workspace's circuit board.
The tutorial altium designer 17 free download generates a list of schematic nets. It would help if you implemented the ECOs to relocate the nets to the circuit board and introduce every net's pins. Once you have completed all the ECOs, parts and nets will pop-up on the right side of your circuit board workspace, as illustrated below. Before placing the parts on the PCB, you should modify the board working area and some settings, like layers and grids.
Apart from the PCB fabrication layers, the circuit editor also facilitates other non-electrical layers. These layers are mostly classified, as shown below:. Mechanical layers, like the 32 general use mechanical layers, which are useful in design activities and special purpose activities. They can also be used in the print and Gerber generation or paired.
Another standard layer is the unique layers, such as the upper and lower silkscreen layers and the multi-layers. The View Configuration window configures the display characteristics of each layer. To access it:. Since you have finished designing and laying your board, you should proceed to create the output documentation, which is useful in reviewing, fabricating, and assembling the PCB. There are several circuit board manufacturing methods, and luckily, Altium Designer can create various outputs for a wide range of purposes.
Here, you keep the configurations of each output in the Project template. Go to the Fabrication Outputs, select the Assembly Outputs, click the Export tab, and press the Reports button to create an individual output.
Through an Output Job Tutorial altium designer 17 free download after keeping the configuration of all outputs in the Output Job document, you can create the outputs manually. Gerber is commonly used to move data from PCB design to fabrication.
Every Gerber document matches a particular layer in the physical PCB. It would help if you referred to your PCB supplier to check their terms and conditions before making the fabrication process' output templates. Remember, if your PCB contains holes, you should create the NC Drill template with the same measurements, resolution, location, and onboard configurations. You can configure Gerber templates within the Gerber Setup panel, accessed through the board editor. Go to the Fabrication Outputs and click the Gerber Files.
Remember, you need to transfer the design information from the application into an Excel BOM You can achieve this by inserting special commands in the Excel document used to build the Bill of Materials. In reality, PCB design is not a walk in the park and very few design software come with the right tools to make your project a success.
