Powerful Design Software that Leaves Nothing to Chance on Your PCB Fabrication Drawing
Altium Designer is the PCB design software you need to make sure that the PCB fabrication drawing that you create is what you need it to be to get your printed circuit boards built correctly on budget and on time.
TOPICS IN THIS SOLUTION
The Design Files Your PCB Manufacturer Needs from You
Altium Designer’s PCB Fabrication Drawings and Other Output Files
ALTIUM DESIGNER
PCB design tools intended to make any process of production easier and secure for a PCB designer.
Schematic capture, simulation, synchronization, component placement, routing, and design rule checks. These are all familiar portions of the printed circuit board design process that designers have perfected over the years, but there’s still one last step to complete the job; the manufacturing deliverables. If those files aren’t created perfectly, all of your previous work may have been wasted. Your final printed circuit board will only be as good as the PCB fabrication drawing and other manufacturing files are, and you can’t afford to send out anything less than the best.
Fortunately, you’ve got an ally that you can depend on; the powerful PCB design software in Altium Designer. Not only is Altium Designer loaded with advanced tools to make your schematic capture and PCB layout easy to accomplish, but it has many automated output features to help you as well. You have the functionality to panelize your designs as well as job output files that will ensure that you always send out a complete build package to your PCB manufacturer. And of course, creating manufacturing drawings in Altium Designer’s Draftsman is as easy as setting up your drawing templates and letting the tool do most of the work for you. So relax and let Altium Designer do the job it was designed to do; help you create the best PCB designs possible.
The Design Files Your PCB Manufacturer Needs from You
To get the best possible quality printed circuit board built by your manufacturer, you need to give them the best quality drawings and output files. To do that, you need to understand exactly what they need in the output files that you give them. Many designs have been manufactured incorrectly because of incorrect or missing data, and you can’t afford to let that happen. To help here is some information on what kind of data you need to include in your output files to ensure that your PCB will be built the way you expect it to be built.
Make Sure Your Manufacturer Gets the Complete Picture
To get the best from your manufacturer, you need to give them design files that have complete data and information in them.
- The fabrication drawing, or drill drawing, is what your manufacturer uses as a guide to create the bare printed circuit board.
- The assembly drawing will instruct your manufacturer on how to assemble all of the parts and pieces on to your PCB.
- Most PCBs are built using data from Gerber files. Here is some more information on what a Gerber file is.
Altium Designer’s powerful PCB design tools will get the job done for you
Powerful PCB Design Tools
Before you can output your PCB you’ve got to design it first, and Altium Designer has your design needs covered with its power and versatility. With an easy to learn and intuitive to use schematic capture application, Altium Designer will create any circuitry needed. From simple one page schematics to complex multi-channel hierarchical designs, Altium Designer is the best tool you can use.
Next, you will need a powerful set of PCB layout tools to tackle your most difficult design challenges, and Altium Designer once again delivers. With a native 3D engine, a vast array of design rules, and some of the most intelligent interactive routing tools available, Altium Designer can handle your toughest design challenges. The glue that brings this all together is Altium’s signature unified design environment that combines all of the functions within Altium Designer seamlessly together so that you can easily transition from schematic to layout to output files. Altium Designer; advanced technology in the PCB design tools that you need for your designs.
The Tools You Need for PCB Design are All in Altium Designer
You don’t need to work with multiple tool platforms, Altium Designer has all the functionality you need built into one advanced set of PCB design tools.
- See how creating circuitry in Altium Designer’s schematic capture application is easy to learn and use.
- There’s no need for worry about moving your data within the different tools in Altium Designer thanks to Altium’s signature unified design environment.
Learn More about the unified design environment in Altium Designer.
- When it’s time to connect the traces, Altium Designer has some of the most intelligent interactive routing features that you will find.
Learn More about the intelligent interactive routing in Altium Designer.
Altium Designer’s Draftsman will help you to easily create superior manufacturing drawings
Altium Designer’s PCB Fabrication Drawings and Other Output Files
More than one design has been sunk by incorrect or incomplete data being sent to the manufacturer, and more than one PCB designer has been overwhelmed trying to create these files on CAD systems that are confusing to use. Altium Designer has been created to make sure that all of its users can easily output the highest quality manufacturing files so that you can be sure that your design will be built the way that you want it to be built. In order to achieve this, Altium Designer has many features to help you generate your final output files.
With Draftsman you will be able to create your manufacturing drawings quickly and easily. Draftsman will easily update the drawings if and when ECO’s are introduced to the design database and has the ability to auto-create drawings based on drawing templates that you create. Do you need to create a custom panel for your manufacturer? No problem, Altium Designer can handle this need as well. And finally, when it is time to create and send out the manufacturing package, Altium Designer once again prepared to help you. By using the user-configurable job output batch files you can be sure that you are sending out fresh data according to the same format and styles every time to every vendor.
Finish the Job Right with Automated Features in Altium Designer
You can’t afford errors or missing data in your manufacturing output files, and Altium Designer is set up to make sure that send out the correct data.
- See how Altium Designer’s Draftsman can make the chore of creating manufacturing drawings simple and quick.
- Do you need to create a panel for your PCB design? It’s not a problem in Altium Designer.
- Altium Designer has specially created user configurable job output batch files ready for you to use so that your output files are created the same way every time.
To get your circuit board successfully through PCB manufacturing and PCB assembly, you’ll want the best design software to guide it every step of the way. Managing components, any layer, copper layout, vias and buried vias and maintaining an accurate fab drawing can be a task for any PCB designer. Make sure your software has the capabilities to manage PCB stackup or PCB panelization too for an optimal lead up to PCB manufacturing.
Trust that your circuit board will get to the PCB fabricator with ease. Take the headache of creating the perfect PCB fabrication drawing out of your hands by using the automated manufacturing output tools in Altium Designer.
