Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles We are going to hide these designators, we don't need them now. So, go to Filter and write "IsDesignator". Enter. Apply. Go to PCB inspector -> Hide. Go to PCB, clear the selection. Now, I will split the window, so we can see PCB and Schematic here. So I go, click here and we see the Schematic here. and check if you have this setting: Tools -> Cross select mode is Selected. When you use click to PCB, same, Tools -> Cross select mode. So, what is happening, when I select a component here, it selects also in PCB. If I select a component in PCB, it selects in the schematic, because we are going to use it. First we will start with this biggest component in the middle and we will use a special command for placing the components. Click here, click into your PCB, go to Tools -> Component placement -> Reposition selected components. It automatically moves the component which we selected. And press "L" on your keyboard, you change the layers. Now, it is on the top. You would like to have it on the bottom, So, press "L". And I will place it somewhere here. In case you can't see some of these windows; for example, Filter, Inspector you will find them here. Click on the PCB Here is PCB inspector, PCB filter, so you can always switch them on there. and for placement, we will use grid, which is like, 0.1 millimeter. Now, we can continue with other components. Just to make it nicer, I will switch off this nets: View -> Connections -> Hide all. And, to make the placement a little bit easier, I will make a shortcut here, for the placement. It's Component placement -> Reposition selected components I will place the button here. Okay Start with these 2 components. Click, SHIFT, click. Hold the SHIFT down and then click. Go to PCB. Reposition selected components, "L" "L" And here is one thing, which we are going to fix. As you can see when I place components, very close to each other, there is error again, they are green. So there is a rule, Design rules -> Component clearance which we will set to be 0.1 again. Okay Now, we can go closer. The same for the other side. Click, press SHIFT, hold it down, click, you can release the SHIFT, click to PCB, Reposition selected components, "L". "L" Press SPACE BAR and rotate the component. Next, this three Hold SHIFT down. Click to PCB. "L" It will go here. This one will go here. This one here. This one goes here. Okay. Now, let's have a look on this divider. It will be here. You see, FB1 goes there. Okay Here is the other divider. The pull-ups. Temporarily, I will place them here. Just to see how much space we need. These two pull ups. Now, this power part I will just select this. It goes to pin number 6. Here is the pin number 6. You can see, when I hold cursor on a pin, it will make the white outline, so I see where it is connected. And pin 19. It's here. There are some other resistors close to the pin 19. This one and this one. Okay This capacitor close to the pin 3, here is pin 3, and pin 7. Good. On the top we will place the transistors, inductors and big capacitors. Let's have a look where the transistor is connected. Okay, so this one should go somewhere here. This other one will go somewhere here, inductor, here, capacitor, perfect. It actually remembers the order when you are selecting more components. So it's very useful. This capacitor needs to go close to input voltage here and also this way. Don't worry that it doesn't look nice, now. We will be doing some optimization, and, almost done ! Almost DONE! These two we missed this component, which one it is? We can go here, click here, and select the pin, and it will select the pin, it's this one. It will go temporarily somewhere here. Good. To make it more comfortable, to work with your PCB, we will create layer sets. Layer set is kind of view, where you enable just some layers, which you would like to see. For example, for top layer, we would like to see only the layer, where is the copper, and layer, where is the outline around the components. So when you look on your PCB, basically, the white color around the components. Here, in our PCB, it is this yellow. The copper is the red one. So I click here, this is the place where you can set it. LS, board layer set. New set. Empty. Top. I will enable top layer and top overlay. I will create also bottom, layer set. bottom layer, bottom overlay. And top and bottom. Top and bottom. All these four. Close. What happened, now, when you click on this small button LS. See, here are the layer sets, which we have just created. When I select top. I see only the top layer, and the component outline. When I click on the bottom, I see only the bottom layer and the component outline. Top and bottom. Placement is very important. So what I will do, I will drag and drop this PCB and we have now big window, so we can see it. I will disable these dots from the grid, do you know how to do it? Do you remember? Snap, grids, do not draw, do not draw, I will go on the bottom layer and this is the place where we will start. What I will also use is go with your cursor on a net, for example this one. Press CTRL, hold it down and click. It will highlight the net, where the cursor was located or placed. When you press "[" "]", you can change the intensity. This is what I will be using quite a lot. and because the proper placement may take some time, I will try to do it as fast as possible. I will start here. This goes here, this goes here, here, here. Ground. This one. This big capacitor I will place somewhere here. I will leave space going with this 5V Here And Good This is the way to do, to see how good the placement is, or how close the placement is select all of them and see. Now, it looks like it's in the middle. Good, let's check this line. We can go closer. Okay This one can go here, with this one we can go here. Good Here ground. We need to place the LDO. Here this capacitor. So this pin goes here, this pin goes here. This one goes here. This has to go here. This goes here and there. Okay Okay I will move this a little bit here, and what I will do I will actually place these resistors better way. I can connect these together. This one we can connect also these together. This will need to go this way, this will need to go this way. Do you understand what I am doing? I can imagine how I will do the layout. From here I will go here. From here I will go here. Then, somehow this way connect it here. Okay, this one goes here so again with these I can go somewhere here. This one we place here. Good This one is ground, this one I can place anywhere. This one I need to place here. Okay, good. Just double checking. Before we actually start drawing the tracks, doing the layout, we will set up some basic rules for the layout. These rules are specified by capability of your PCB manufacturer. So one of the things, which you need to check with your PCB manufacturer is what is the minimum clearance. It is the space between two tracks. The isolation. I will use 0.15. You need to check what is the minimum width, what they can make. Again, I will use 0.15. For the maximum, let's say 10 millimeters. Okay And now, we can do some preliminary things, based on our placement. Okay Good This is just to see, how good the placement is if we can fit everything correctly. Okay, I think I see the potential issue, this. So, we need to move this a little bit further. Maybe better move it over here. So we have also space for this one. And we need some space also for this one. Again, we need to move this a little bit. So we can go Good. For this maybe the best will be to have a plane. We need to connect a few other things. This is ground, to make it more visible, I will assign a color to ground. Ground, right click. Change color, I will use dark blue. Press F5, you can switch on the color of override. override, or F5, it will disappear. So for example if you select a color for more nets, you can switch it off or switch on, F5. We would like to see it. We would like to see what pads are ground. Okay For this demonstration, I will use 6 layer PCB, just to show you how you can design board with more than 2 layers. So, what I will do, press right click, options, layer stack manager, see, currently we have only 2 layers. I will add one ground plane. Then, I will add 2 layers and another ground plane. 1,2,3,4,5,6. Top layer, I will call L1. This one I will call L2. and assign it to ground L3 L4 L5 Ground L6 So what we can do, we can actually add the ground VIAs and we will create some planes on this layer 3, layer 4 and rest of the signals, which are missing. I will improve the placement on the top layer, so select top, right click, Snap Grid. For this big placement I will use bigger grid, one millimeter. I know this capacitor should be close to this pin. So I will place it here. This inductor should be close to here and this capacitor should be close to here. Okay Nice The same way I will do the placement here. Good This is what, 24. I will move it a little bit, 5. 1,2,3 23 Nice Here Good What is the position? 30 30, This one is 20. 20 4, let's move it to be 5. 5 These are 46, so let's move it 5 millimeters from the edge. Nice I will move these a little bit closer. Press arrows and you can move it just one step. and I will change the Grid back to 0.1. Now, important part! We need to place VIAs. First, let's set a default VIA. Default VIA you can set here. Preferences, DXP preferences, PCB editor -> Defaults -> VIA and ask your PCB manufacturers what is the minimum VIA they can make. As you can see, I use 0.2 and that's the hole and 0.45 is the ring around the hole. Also, I normally mask the VIAs. You have two options, you can specify it like this one, or you can force tenting on the top and bottom. It will mask the VIA. Mask, it means there will be the green color on the VIAs. Also, we need to check one rule. The rule is this routing style for VIAs. Because we use the hole 0.2, so it would fail here. So, I put here 0.1. 0.2 Maximum 10 milimeters, that's not really important. The ring is minimum 0.4. We use maximum, let's say 10 and we use 0.45. Also, check the hole size. Minimum, maximum, 10 millimeters. Okay We can start placing the VIAs on the unconnected nets. Let's have a look here. We can't place VIAs here because here is the pad. So I will move these components. These are just POK signals so it's not really important where exactly they are placed. I will connect it like here. Because this is power, I would use a little bit wider track so start drawing and press TAB, we can change the width to 0.3, for example. Okay Double click and then right button on your mouse. Here are the VIAs. Place VIA. And I will click here, press SHIFT down, I will select also the VIA. CTRL+C Click here, this is the position, then, when I press CRTL+V, it will be snapped, see. If I press CTR+C and I click here. Then this point will be the position where the cursor is when I press CTRL+V, see. But this is better position. So, CTRL+C, CTRL+V, and I will place it here. Also, here, here. Good SPACE BAR to rotate. This one we can delete, press DELETE. We can make it even smaller. And if you want to delete more segments, select first one and press BACKSPACE. I will connect also this one. Good Now, we can go from the pin one and connect rest of the tracks. I change width to be 0.2 because it was too big. You could see the copper was somewhere here. I can show you again. Press CTRL+Z, you go back. So, start, press TAB, 0.3 See, the copper here it goes closer to the other pin. I change it to 0.2 and it's now correct. 1,2 3 Here we can place a VIA. And make it, we will make it then a little bit wider, later but you can do it also now. Start routing, press TAB, 0.3. That's too much so 0.2 and 0.2 Good This one needs to be connected with this one, so I will place a VIA here. Okay And we will connect it on layer 2. So I will show signal layers I go on layer 3, I go on layer 3 and I will connect it here. I go back to the bottom. Here we have ground. 0.2 This one is unconnected. 1.5 It will be connected here. Okay This one It's okay It's okay This one is POK. It needs to be connected with this one. 0.15 The next pin, this goes nowhere, this one I will move this a little bit, so just click and drag. I will connect it to this one. SHIFT I will copy this track because I know it goes also here, and here, just to make it faster. Go on layer 3, connect it together. Next one goes here. Preliminary, I will just connect it like here. Later, I will draw a polygon, so full copper around these pads. At this moment, I just want to be sure. I can connect everything and I see how it looks, so I can optimize it, because layout for switching power supply is very important. Goes nowhere, this one goes here. Layer 3 Okay Ground Oh, this is not nice, I will redraw it. Okay Again, this is not nice. I will then improve the layout as I already said. Good This goes here. Here I need some space. On Layer 3 Connect this one I will still leave it unconnected because I don't know what other connections here will be like. Goes nowhere, this is ground. It's connect it here. Again, just temporary connection. There will be plane or polygon. Good Good I can now show all the connections So, we see what still needs to be connected. Now, I am going to connect everything. And I will then explain what connections are important and we will improve them together. Because some of these are not really how they should be. For example, big capacitors, they should have more VIAs. I will explain because there are big currents. and one VIA can carry only limited current. So, for our power supply, which supports like 5 Amps, for example one VIA is not enough. On Layer 4 I will connect this, I will actually make a big plane on layer 4. but currently I use only this temporary connection because if I draw a plane here I could draw a plane but in your project if you draw a plane too soon, it's hard to work with because it will be covering all the tracks, what are below the plane. Also, when you place; for example, a VIA, there will be violation all the time, you need to refresh the plane all the time. It's much easier if you just draw the tracks first. and do the planes and polygons on the end of your layout. Let's connect these grounds. Again, these are transistors. Here will be big current flowing so we will improve it. Same, here is a capacitor with big current. We will draw small planes everywhere. You always need to think ahead, how you use your layers. I will rotate these capacitors, it would be much better if this goes like here, rather than around. So, I go and do it like this. We can actually move it even closer to the inductor and the same here. Does it look same? The 17.2 is the X position. 17.2 You know, just to make it look same and nice. I need to move also this. If you want to move something, something very difficult to move, use this. Good So, now I can go here and here and connect these to ground. Good I will redraw this one. Good Only a few unconnected nets. You can actually there are some commands, which for example press "+", "-", you change layers and the VIAs can be placed. I just like to have a full control over tracks and VIAs. Sometimes it may be a little bit time consuming but it's just the way you prefer to work with. So you may want to have a look on some ways how you can speed up, improve or make the design the way you really like. You know, I mean the way how you work with the Altium designer because there are a lot of options how you can do one thing. The best, you need to choose the best one, which fits exactly to the way, you like to work. Still this one. SHIFT+S Only this grounds are still unconnected. Here, I need to move these tracks here. So, I have place for VIA. Here Here you may want to place more VIAs because it also will carry some heat out from the chip. You see, there are violations. Let's go on each layer now and I fix violations. I redraw the tracks. Here I still see, there are some errors like here is green, here is green, but I will show you how you can check what's wrong and how to fix it. See, it says here. Some errors First This one layer 4 and VIA. It's not very visible, for difficult designs this is not very visible, so much better way to do it is PCB rules and violations. And you can go here, one by one and look here. Nothing, nothing, here is an error. So, you double click, you say jump and highlight. This is much better you see it here, it is much better, than, if you use this one and click here. I will redraw it. Good, the error is gone. Test point We don't use test points, I will disable this. This one, jump, highlight, OK, DELETE. Here are all the rules. Test point Test point Thermal, thermal, we will fix these before we finish the layout. Important is we enable these unrouted nets, and we are sure that everything is routed perfectly. So the unrouted nets are 0.
B1 US pcb layer click pin placement press Learn Altium Essentials - Doing PCB Layout (Lesson 4) 35 6 johnson741963 posted on 2017/09/20 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary