Altium designer pcb layout tutorial
The first thing to do is to give your schematic one last look to make sure it's ready for the PCB design to go to layout.
ALTIUM DESIGNER PCB LAYOUT TUTORIAL HOW TO
Now let's take a look at how to import a schematic to a PCB in Altium Designer: Step 1: Preparing to Synchronize the Design Watch this video for a quick demonstration on how to get started with the very basics so you can learn how to create a PCB layout from a schematic in Altium Designer: Altium Designer's integrated design tools are designed to keep your PCB schematic and layout synchronized without using an external program for schematic capture. You'll be able to quickly check your Altium Designer layout against your design rules and constraints, easily define your layer stack, run simulations of your design, and much more. Then you’ll be able to work through your components, copper setting, ECAD/MCAD design team interventions and purchasing requirements to optimize your PCB design files for manufacturing.Īs part of this process, Altium Designer includes several important design that help ensure your create an error-free PCB design from a schematic. In an ideal setting, you'll convert a schematic to a PCB with your schematic capture tool and translate it easily into a finished layout. After these initial requirements are met, you’ll want access to printed circuit views and file outputs like PCB footprints, Gerber files and 3D modelling. In reality, the main thing you need to know to convert a schematic to a PCB layout is that you have access to components and component placement features, as well as traces and trace routing for copper placement. Traces everywhere, and the occasional flying monkey. What Can You Expect in a PCB Layout Editor?īoards. This is also important if you want to reuse a schematic that was made by another PCB designer. This is especially important if you are using specialty components that are not found in the default set of component libraries in Altium Designer. If you've decided to go the design reuse route and import a schematic to a new PCB, you should make sure you have created libraries for your schematic symbols and footprints for your components. Read more about design reuse in this article. If you want to import an existing schematic to a new layout in Altium Designer, be sure to follow some best practices for design reuse. You won't need to recreate the schematic. The answer is: Yes! If you have an existing schematic file from another project, and you want to import the schematic to a new PCB, you can simply add the existing schematic file to a new project and follow the three steps above. Can You Import an Existing Schematic File to a New PCB in Altium Designer? Once you've completed these three steps, you can now start arranging components and routing traces between them. In Step 3, you'll define a layer stack for your new PCB. You'll need to create a new PCB file in your current project, and then use the schematic capture tool to import footprints for your components into your new PCB. Step 2 involves using the schematic capture tool to import the board into a blank PCB layout. Once your PCB layout is created, this first synchronization step will ensure that any later change in the schematic can be immediately imported into the PCB layout. Step 1 is intended to check your schematic for design rule violations that keep your schematic from being synchronized with your PCB layout.
Step 2: Use the Schematic Capture Tool to Import Design Data to a PCB Step 1: Preparing to Synchronize the Design The process for how to convert a schematic to a PCB layout in Altium Designer follows three simple steps: How to Convert a Schematic to a PCB Layout in Altium Designer Creating a PCB layout from a schematic doesn’t have to be difficult. This simple little design probably won’t be anything like the schematics that you are working on, but the basic steps of data transfer will be the same. We’ll take a look here at a very simple schematic and see what needs to be done to synchronize it with a brand new PCB design. Whatever the reason, you are ready to start working on the board side of PCB design, but you’re not sure how to create PCB from schematic Altium Designer.įortunately, the next step in Altium Designer is very straightforward. Maybe your regular layout resources aren’t available, or perhaps you want to try to do your first layout yourself. The circuitry is defined and you are ready to go to PCB layout. You’ve done your usual excellent job of putting together the PCB schematic.