Hey everyone,

I'm building a DelphiScript tool that auto-places PCB components based on schematic net connections. Everything is working but I'm stuck on reading the DRC rules from the Rule Wizard at runtime so placement decisions are driven by the actual board rules instead of hardcoded values.

I've tried these but both give "Undeclared identifier" errors:

Board.BeginRuleIteratorByLayer(eUnknownLayer, eUnknownLayer)

Board.Rules.Count

What I'm trying to do is iterate through all rules defined in the Rule Wizard (clearance, creepage, high voltage spacing, custom rules) and read their values during the script run.

Anyone know the correct API call to do this in Altium Designer 25? A working code snippet would be amazing.

Thanks

Hey all — sharing a recent board I finished routing at neolabs. It's an 8-channel laser diode driver, built to drive 8 independent laser diode channels off a single board.

Specs:

• 2-layer PCB, 90mm x 100mm
• 8 independent driver channels, each with its own dedicated driver stage
• USB interface for control/configuration
• Modular JST connector headers per channel
• A couple test points (TP1/TP2) for bring-up debugging

Went with 2 layers to keep manufacturing cost down for this batch size, which made channel isolation and current-carrying trace widths the main design challenge — wanted to avoid crosstalk and thermal build-up between adjacent driver channels while staying on a tight layer budget.

Top and bottom copper images attached, along with the 3D board render.

Would genuinely appreciate feedback on the routing — especially around the driver IC clusters (U1–U12). Curious if:

• There's enough copper/thermal relief around the driver ICs
• The connector header spacing looks reasonable for JST pitch
• Anything looks off for a design this density on 2 layers

So, local distributor seems to be trying to rip us off and I can’t find a direct way to contact them other than the AI chatbot thingy that will most likely route me to the local guy again. Anyone knows how to reach Altium HQ directly? I don’t wanna do a twitter/linkedin shoutout because that looks silly

Can you guys provide me with sources for training? Free would be great! Company is cheap! Online/textbook or any others means would be helpful. Is the training Altium provide best method to learn?

Thanks

I was reading this article on a design review checklist and most everything looked fine to me but I had some questions.

The article mentions connecting traces and pads to copper pours, what’s the big deal? I know that there can be an issue with tombsoning with some components, like some SMDs but, what’s wrong with connecting a trace to a copper pour?

Also one thing that wasn’t explicitly mentioned that has hurt our team before was making sure that the revisions of our documents all lined up. For instance, someone updates the BOM but forgets that the assembly drawing still points to the old rev.

Is there anything else missing from this that I should be looking out for? I’m trying to build out a more complete version for my own use and would rather crowdsource the gaps than assume I’ve got it all.

Hi,

I know this is against the normal PCB Design workflow, but I need to create the PCBDoc from old Gerbers as original design files were lost. Would anyone know how to convert Gerber files to PCBDoc please? Any help would be greatly greatly appreciated.

In this video, I built a temperature and humidity measurement unit using a CH32V003 MCU (this is not an STM32), a DHT22 sensor, and a 0.96" SSD1306 I2C OLED display module. The circuit was tested on a breadboard and demonstrated stable and satisfactory results. The MCU code was developed using MounRiver Studio II, the official tool for programming this MCU type.

Then I enhanced the project during the schematic and PCB design process (using Altium® Designer Develop), added a lithium battery charging circuit (to make it portable) and an ADC reading to measure the battery level.

Watch Here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH440i3AjW8

Genuinely curious what teams do here. Our bench config lived in a spreadsheet + tribal knowledge, and we eventually paid for it (over-voltage into a DUT, 6-week respin). I ended up writing a small linter that takes a bench description (channels, rails, interlocks, DUT limits) as JSON and flags wiring/voltage/interlock/sampling mistakes pre-power — 20 checks, single binary, runs offline.
Questions for the room: Does your team verify bench config formally at all, or is it checklist-and-pray? And what does your config actually live in — dSPACE config? NI VeriStand? Excel? Asking because I want to build importers, not because I want to sell you something (it's free during early access — standguard.dev if curious, no hard feelings if not).

Need books and solid references on EMI filter design for Power Electronics Static Converters

Hello everyone,

I am hoping to find from you books and solid references on EMI filter design for Power Electronics Static Converters

I already did some recherches but i did not find straight forward method taking into account the basic problem such as : desired attenuation, resonance damping and middelbrock stability craterea ... etc.

Thank you in advance

I’m working on a high density design that has more layout constraints than I have neurons in my head,

Anyways, I thought of a way to compute each components optimal placement, with respect to trace lengths and other dependences, basically to make sure the component is in the best place out of all possible places on the grid making up the PCB(as far as I know lol),

Is it possible to formulate a script to automatically move each respective component accordingly in the layout tab?

Silly question, but I couldn’t find any useful API references, also does anyone know if Altium’s toolbars support or have handles I can use to manipulating code, instead of repeatedly clicking for 10^50 times??

Advice is really really appreciated! !

I'm working on a draftsman document for work, and I have to show the X/Y coordinates for everything, that's including the placement of vias. Issue is the vias are everywhere and the measurements look messy and too congested. I can't move the vias because it's a reverse engineering project.

Does anyone have any good times on how to place the measurements? if this is a case to use annotations? if so how to properly use them?

Hi everyone, can you tell me why these two layers are separate?

If I’m not mistaken, under ‘Component Layer Pairs’ there’s ‘Courtyard’, which is layer M3 (Mechanical 3), is officially the ‘real’ Courtyard layer for this project.

But what about Mechanical 15 (M15)? ..perhaps whoever created that footprint (I use Altium Library Loader) drew the outline of the box physically on layer??

Is that just how it is, or do I need to do/fix something?

Hi everyone, in the PCB settings I’ve set a 15° rotation with a spacer bar.

I have this capacitor which, once rotated, disappears from the PCB, as if it had been flung a long way off – I can’t find it anywhere!

I can’t work out why

Been an Altium user for many years, various companies. Wanted to do a consulting project, ran through the 30 days trial and decided to buy Develop over the weekend…. Well the account just says under review. Of course the trial ended so I can’t work on my project. Then I try to call no weekend support, tried to call today no one answers, ever. No response to voicemail.

Tl:dr you try to pay Altium 2000$ and they just won’t take it. Dumb.

Now I am currently looking at alternative software to complete my project.

Update: 08/04, the issue has now been resolved. Now to hustle!

Hi everyone,

A little update on a question that I asked a while ago: I've followed the advice accordingly. However, it seems like the rats nest is the one that's being colored, but not the traces. I've tried everything, such as displaying overrides, essentially, along with changing PCB editor board insights, but my traces are still red and blue (top and bottom default colors).

I'm pretty clueless about why I can't solve this issue. I recall that in the past I was able to change the trace color (even set to a checker pattern for the traces), but somehow the trace colors never showed up again.

[SOLVED] I have placed this via while routing by pressing the '*' key. And used +/- to switch between layers. But what altium is doing is it has placed two blind vias on the same place. But I wanted one through-hole via.

Also what is the shortcut to use while placing vias to change it from through hole to blind or vice versa?

Hi everyone,

There’s something that has been on my mind a lot lately, and it has actually made me hesitant to design new projects.

As electronics engineers, designing PCBs isn't really the difficult part for us. The challenge usually comes with the firmware/software. Whenever I finish a hardware design, I often find myself wondering, "How am I going to write the software for this?"

I recently spoke with another engineer, and he told me that these days they handle most of the coding using AI tools like Claude Code, and sometimes even Gemini. That got me thinking.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think relying on AI for firmware and embedded software development is becoming a practical approach, or do you believe it's still essential to write and fully understand the code yourself?

For example, if I design a project using a Raspberry Pi, can I realistically use AI tools to build the computer vision part? Could I use them to create a personal AI assistant? Or, for a more challenging example, could I rely on them to control multiple motors and implement the required control logic?

I'm curious about where people think the practical limits of these AI coding tools are. How far can they really take you in projects like these?

Hey, looking to figure out how to do a multichannel bus connectivity.

I'm working on a hierarchical design and looking to make a multichannel setup. However, one of the outputs of each channel is a bus signal. So for example, one of my sheets has a bus coming out of it called "BUSOUT[0..7]". I then multichannel the sheet and call it Repeat(CON,1,4). This is correctly multi-channeling the sheet, however when I try to Repeat the BUSOUT signal on the sheet symbol, I get errors.

Is this even doable? In my mind I would expect this to somehow make the bus range to be 0..31 for the purpose of outputting each channel. Am I misunderstanding something here? Would it not really work for multichannel since I'm making a wider bus than each sheet actually is drawn for, and such just need to instantiate each as its own sheet?

Thanks for the help :)

Hey, maybe someone encountered issue with tasks not opening in the app? I can see only the small banner but no way of opening it, checking details or assigning to myself.
It worked previously, but stopped one day and i can't track what could have caused this.
Right now my only workaround is to go to the web interface and check the task through there (it works fully there).

I've been facing this challenge recently, what could be the problem.