Turns out the hundreds of primitives resulted in Altium becoming very slow and unresponsive. I initially ignored this because I knew that the circuits were electronically connected and only the spacing mattered. I noticed that the coils created using Planar-TX (script) resulted in many primitives (lines and arcs) that appeared to be connected but failed to be electronically, resulting in many short circuit warnings. Altium and our computers were able to handle this board without issue. The first iteration of the board used only 8 coils on 3 layers, which failed to work with the control system, but it did provide insight on design. It is important to spend time upfront to ensure the schematic is correct before attempting layout. It may appear that a problem could be fixed with 3 clicks, but when scaling to larger designs, 3 clicks may quickly grow to thousands of time consuming and incident prone clicks. This project highlighted the importance of addressing small problems found in the schematic. Optimizing designs to allow Altium to handle the large number of primitives in each coil.Via placement while minimizing coil placement.Custom part footprints- coils with 10 mm diameter, 8 mil spacing.The list of major hurdles overcome in this project included: One, I was learning Altium Designer 17, and two, I did not comprehend the scalability when designing in Altium. This project was challenging for a few reasons. My main task for this project was to create a 4 layer circuit board, iterating on the previous design developed by Ryo. This was a challenging project that allowed me to grow professionally and improve my PCB fabrication skillset. Essentially we we tried to maximize the surface area we could cover, the goal was a desk space, as we thought that this would provide an interesting medium for humans to interact. The control of the system was designed by Ryo with some input from myself. Shift registers were used to allow for more coils to be used with a single micro controller (Arduino). The array is similar to an LED matrix, where a P and N type FET pair are used to activate a specific coil. A current is pulsed through individual coils allowing for the magnet to be pushed smoothly across the top of the board. This would allow for the smoothest possible actuation of the magnetic marker. The PCB is an array of coils alternating layers so that the distance between centers of coils could be minimized. Below, I talk about my discoveries and adventure with Altium Designer 17. I am happy to have had the opportunity to work under pressure and guidance of such a driven individual. A project of this scale was imperative to learning Altium’s features thoroughly and introduced me to more manufacturing considerations for future projects.
#Moving altium 10 to new machine how to#
I have finally learned Altium Designer and I have learned how to use it well. Designed by Kevin Kuwata and Ryo SuzukiĪfter all of the setbacks and stress, this was a tremendous experience. Final PCB, one of 4 used in the HCI experiments.
The further the coils are apart, the more discrete each position appears, resulting in less smooth transitions, and increased current to attract the magnet from point A to point B. By having over lapping coils, the magnet could be pulsed and moved in less discrete steps. Below is an image of the coil array, dispersed on 4 layers. The goal was to create a surface which a magnet could be moved to create patterns, animations, display information and alerts. My task was developing printed circuit boards for experiments for human computer interaction (HCI). This past summer I had the opportunity to work for computer science PhD candidate Ryo Suzuki under the guidance of Tom Yeh of the computer science department.