When you open PDN analyzer, you will start out with a new solution that has a single network to get you started. The schematic of the motor driver circuit as shown in Altium Designer This makes them much easier to find, rather than having to rely on identifying a net named something like IC2_2! Setupīefore starting PDN Analyzer, I suggest you first add net names to any nets that you will be referencing in the power network design. Finally, you can also check out the PDN Analyzer documentation. There is also the full getting started guide for PDN Analyzer which runs through installation and licensing. The Altium documentation contains several getting started examples, however the motor controller project I built is much simpler and allows you to quickly set up the power network for every net on the board, which I hope will allow you to get started that much quicker if you’re pressed for time. If you’re new to PDN Analyzer, I wanted to create a board you could download and follow along with to set up the power network and look at the analysis as a way to learn how to use the tool. For less technical stakeholders, it also allows you to quickly create a visual map of the circuit board to highlight potential issues, allowing you to see why you may need to shift the specifications a little (perhaps giving you more board real estate) to ensure the board works as expected. Even if just for powering a microcontroller or an FPGA, you can use PDN Analyzer to quickly visualize where current densities are too high, or the voltage drop on a trace is exceeding your margins. This is what I really love about PDN Analyzer: it takes a little bit of work to set up for a complex board, but once you’ve done that, it shines spectacularly by letting you optimize your circuit board for the currents and voltages on it. If you have polygon pours which carry current, a mixture of trace widths, components along the trace, or other complex PCB features, it becomes more difficult to calculate whether the board will be sufficient for the task at hand.īeing able to visualize current density on a copper layer helps you make more optimal design decisions. For more complex boards, however, that can get quite tedious very quickly. For a board as simple as this, you could simply look at the trace length and width and use an online calculator (or a little math) to figure out current densities on the traces and see how they would cope with the load. While it’s a relatively simple board, it will still be transferring a maximum of 4 amps of current if both motors are running at the driver’s full rated current per channel. Previously, I posted about designing a simple DC brushed motor controller using a single IC.
0 kommentar(er)
