Customize Your PCB Drill Sizes With Altium Designer

Keeping track of your vias and mounting hole dimensions requires powerful PCB design software. Your design platform should also generate your manufacturing outputs in industry-standard file formats. With Altium Designer, you can do all of this and more, and all within a single software platform.

A PCB design software package that contains all the tools you need to define your manufacturing and assembly instructions in industry-standard file formats

With the number of PCB design software programs and utilities out there, it can be difficult to choose the program that will work best for you. In any given month, who knows how many circuits and boards you’ll be working on. Use CAD software which can get your electronics to manufacturing without the pain of information mismanagement along the way.

Altium Designer allows you to build your PCBs, define your PCB drill sizes, and generate manufacturing outputs within a single software platform. When you work within Altium Designer’s unified design environment, you can move from start to finish within a single program.

Layout, Design, Customization and Fabrication All in One Place

With all the design and routing features required to make your PCB work properly, it is understandable that folks tend to overlook fabrication and PCB manufacturing. An integrated design package gives you the power to design top-quality Printed Circuit Boards and define your manufacturing specifications within a unified environment. Aspect ratios, board thickness, annular rings, and soldering can all be arranged beforehand in strong PCB design software.

Customize Design Parameters in a Unified Interface

Drill specifications are extremely important when you move to manufacturing your Printed Circuit Board. When you work in a unified environment, your customized via, tooling hole features, and drilling specifications translate directly into your manufacturing outputs.

• The top-notch CAD tools in Altium designer let you build the best quality layouts.Learn more about the CAD layout tools in Altium Designer.
• Once you set your via size, Altium Designer gives you features to optimize your nets, verify trace clearance, and route between layers.Learn more about interactive routing features in Altium Designer.
• Generating your manufacturing outputs is easy in Altium Designer. Your layout and fabrication specifications sync directly to your manufacturing outputs.Learn more about generating your manufacturing outputs in Altium Designer.

Manage everything from components to board to schematic with unified design environments in Altium Designer

Take Control of Your Via and PCB Drill Size Specifications

Advanced PCB fabrications require advanced routing techniques, including innovative use of vias. With all the different via structures available, and all the different placement options, your PCB design software should make it easy to keep track of your vias. Keeping track of minimum guidelines as well as enabling circuits and boards to adapt as you see fit will be paramount. A strong PCB editor will enable you to check and inform your design from schematic to PCB layout.

You’ll need to define drilling steps for your vias, conductive and non-conductive fill options, and overall layer stackup. Altium Designer has all the tools you need to define your via structures and includes the fabrication and drill holes in your manufacturing outputs. Keeping your information clear, precise, and documented will keep your production process running forward.

Customizing Drill Steps for Your Vias Is Easy With Altium Designer

Perhaps the most important routing features in a multilayer PCB are vias. Your vias are what let you route between each layer in your board. Whether you’re placing via-in-pad, through-hole vias, blind vias, or buried vias, you will need to define drill diameter and depth in each layer. Altium Designer gives you all the tools you need to customize your via sizes and specify how you want them placed in your board.

• You can customize your pad shapes, via sizes, and via types that will appear on your PCB using the Pad Via Library in Altium Designer.Learn more about the Pad/Via Template Editor in Altium Designer.
• Once you set your via size, Altium Designer gives you features to optimize your nets, verify trace clearance, and route between layers.Learn more about interactive routing features in Altium Designer.
• Altium Designer makes it easy to define depth drilling and backdrill for your customized vias.Learn more about backdrilling in Altium Designer.

Define and align your mounting holes and vias in Altium Designer

Defining Drill Hole Sizes in Your Manufacturing Outputs

Preparing your design for circuit board manufacturing and defining the machining steps in your design means that you need a design program that lets you create your CAD/CAM drawings, Gerber files, and Excellon drill files. Other software companies will try to sell you separate software programs for your printed circuit board’s separate needs, but Altium Designer gives you all of these capabilities within a single software package.

Altium Designer gives you the capability to define your mounting and backdrill hole diameters within a convenient interface. This powerful software package gives you support for imperial and metric standard drill sizes, and you can even select customized PCB drill sizes. Using standardized sizes allows for your electronics to be more approachable by a variety of manufacturers. Altium Designer also lets you define routed or milled holes in your board, giving you serious flexibility and customization power.

Altium Designer Supports Industry Standard File Formats

Your drill specifications and other PCB fabrication instructions are defined and stored in a number of different file formats. These formats are used by PCB manufacturers to fabricate and assemble your board and keep your production process smooth. Thankfully, Altium Designer supports all of these file formats and allows you to generate these files directly from your board layout, and all within a single software package.

• Altium Designer gives you the ability to define your drill pairs while configuring your layer stackup.

  Learn more about generating your drill pairs and layer stackup in Altium Designer.

• Altium Designer lets you export your drilling instructions in the popular Gerber and Excellon 2 file formats. The CAM Editor in Altium Designer also supports traditional file formats (e.g. Gerber, ODB++, Aperture List Files (*.lst), and NC Drill/Excellon 2) that are used to build CAM documents.Learn more about working with the CAM Editor in Altium Designer.
• You can edit your PCB drill sizes, tooling holes, and backdrilling parameters using Altium Designer’s intuitive interface.Learn more about defining custom holes and pad sizes in Altium Designer.

With all the PCB features that require drilling steps during fabrication, you need PCB design software that gives you the power to customize your drill parameters. Altium Designer has all the functionality you need to define your PCB drill locations and mounting hole placement. Everything you need to generate your manufacturing and assembly instructions in industry-standard file formats is contained within a single software package.