Electronics Forum / CAD / December 2006

I am an electronics graduate and I wish to learn hardware board design.
I would like to learn High speed board design(>100MHz), schematic
entry, signal integrity and prototype testing.
How shall i begin? Whats the flow of board design?. Please let me know

Let me repeat a question I asked on the Cadsoft group since there are
also users of other CAD systems here: Is there a PDA or other handheld
that can be used for schematic entry and editing, plus maybe writing the
module spec to go with it?

I have noticed that boards with leads/dips made in fabrication plants
are soldered almost to perfection.
What sort of machine is used to do this?
Can this be copied at home?

dana.bash@gmail.com

I've worked with a partener who use PADS to generate PCB.
He has generated a PDF file which represents a layout board.
But I can't make a research of a component because the PDF is manage is
an image.

Does anyone have any experience in using Altium Designer.  What are the
pros and cons?  How does it stack up against other CAD packages?  I've
used Protel and Orcad for electronic design and it appears the Altium
bought out Protel awhile back.  From a cost standpoint, I'm looking ...

I just ran onto a situation where a modulated laser impinging upon a
photodiode had such a high light level that the photodiode was
"saturated"... no more available carriers.
Thus "clipping" of the modulation was occurring in the photodiode

What is the actual difference between the following :
1) Memory Mapped
2)  I/O Mapped
3) Memory Mapped I/O

I'm curious if anyone out there knows of a method to convert Gerber-x files
to some type of 3D CAD format. I prefer .sat, but I can import most common
formats. This would be quite helpful for creating photorealistic 3D
renderings. I'm using Protel99SE in the event there is some ...

I'm currently having a serious problem: I got an LVPECL clock synthesizer
and I want to connect it to several clock inputs on my FPGA. The FPGA
features 2 LVDS interfaces, whereas each LVDS pair is located at opposite
sides of the device, meaning there will be some extensive ...

Hi;
I want to write a simple parser that can parse a spice nelist that contains
capacitor, resistor, and mosfet. I want to  store the componets in a graph
so I can perform the following actions.

what is a good free capture and layout software?
Ivan

Program: Mentor Graphics Expedition PCB 2005
I tried to generate a template for a 1 layer board (Bottom) with jumper
wires on the top side. However, I failed to do the setups for it because
there seems to be no way to make drill holes with bottom pads (not vias)

Where could I download all the common symbols in a format that I could use
on a web page?
which is ? (jpg? gif? other?)
I don't need a huge library of specialized parts with manufacturer numbers

Hi NG,
I 've got her older Altium Designer-SCH Files (file date from 6/20006) which
were designed with a Designer-Version prior to 6.6.
These files can't be opened because the raise an error saying "invalid