Podcasts about Altium

Discover the complex landscape of PCB manufacturing in this insightful interview from the OnTrack Podcast with Greg Papandrew, Managing Director of DirectPCB. Learn how recent tariff changes are impacting the industry, why balancing cost and quality remains critical, and what options exist beyond China for PCB sourcing.    Greg shares valuable strategies for navigating global supply chains and offers practical advice for designers looking to optimize their PCB designs for better manufacturing outcomes.   This episode of the Altium OnTrack podcast explores the evolving PCB manufacturing ecosystem, examining how geopolitical factors are reshaping where and how circuit boards are produced.   

Discover how the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA) is revolutionizing electronics education through innovative training programs and university partnerships. In this episode of the OnTrack Podcast, Host Zach Peterson interviews PCEA President Mike Buetow shares insights on their mission to bridge the skills gap in PCB design, their partnership with Wayne State University, and the launch of the new PCB Detroit show.    Learn about PCEA's certified training curriculum, their vision for AI in PCB design, and how they're preparing the next generation of designers. This enlightening conversation reveals how PCEA is making PCB design knowledge more accessible through chapter-based local communities, professional certifications, and university collaborations. Mike also discusses the challenges of integrating AI into the design process and shares his perspective on the future of PCB design tools and education.  

IPC APEX 2025 is bringing unprecedented opportunities for electronics industry professionals to shape the future of manufacturing. In this exclusive interview, IPC President & CEO Dr. John Mitchell reveals how this event combines standards development, technical innovation, and powerful networking opportunities under one roof. Learn why both seasoned professionals and emerging engineers should attend this transformative industry gathering.   From evolving workforce development initiatives to cutting-edge technical sessions on AI, advanced packaging, and EV power electronics, discover how IPC APEX 2025 is addressing the industry's most pressing challenges. Dr. Mitchell shares insights on new features like the Learning Lounge and explains how attendees can maximize their experience across standards meetings, professional development courses, and the exhibition floor.  

In this episode of Supply Chain Now, hosts Scott Luton and Marty Parker welcome Justin Sears, Head of Product Marketing for SaaS at Altium, to explore how manufacturers can stay resilient amid rising tariffs, supply chain disruptions, and evolving global risks. Justin shares how his career journey—from early SaaS solutions to leading cloud-based collaboration tools for electronics design—has shaped his approach to visibility, agility, and innovation.Together, they unpack the complex impact of new tariffs on electronic components, why just-in-time is being replaced by just-in-case, and how companies are shifting procurement strategies to adapt. Justin also talks about the role of cloud platforms like Altium 365 in improving real-time collaboration across design, procurement, and manufacturing—bridging gaps, reducing errors, and increasing speed to market.Jump into the conversation:(00:00) Intro(01:14) Electronics industry and trade landscape(02:21) Altium's history(07:24) Impact of US tariffs on electronics(14:46) Challenges in product development(18:13) Cloud-based collaboration and workflow automation(24:44) Shifting from single to multi-source models(25:09) The challenges of coordination(25:33) Eliminating email chaos(26:12) The importance of supply chain visibility(26:44) Analog vs. digital supply chain management(27:41) Benefits of cloud platforms(29:37) Real-world examples of digitalization(32:34) Geopolitical and cyber threats(38:46) Collaboration in supply chain management(43:27) The crystal ball of global sourcingAdditional Links & Resources:Connect with Justin Sears: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinsears/Read more on the Altium 365 Supply Chain Management webpage: https://www.altium365.com/Check out the Altium BOM Portal: https://www.altium365.com/capabilities/supply-chain/bom-portalCheck out Altium Stories on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AltiumStoriesLearn more about Supply Chain Now: https://supplychainnow.comWatch and listen to more Supply Chain Now episodes here: https://supplychainnow.com/program/supply-chain-nowSubscribe to Supply Chain Now on your favorite platform: https://supplychainnow.com/joinWork with us! Download Supply Chain Now's NEW Media Kit: https://bit.ly/3XH6OVkWEBINAR- Lessons Learned from the Trenches: How AI Will Impact the Future of Work: https://bit.ly/3DUnROxWEBINAR- Adapting to Volatility: Navigating Trade Wars, Supply Chain Disruptions & AI: https://bit.ly/4kqSv2DWEBINAR- Plug the Leaks: Where You're Losing Money in Shipping (and How to Fix It): https://bit.ly/42iFW0ZWEBINAR- Altium 365: Integrated Supply Chain Management Across the Product:

Join Tech Consultant Zach Peterson as he chats with Tony Lentz, Chemist and Field Application Engineer with FCT Assembly, about the latest innovations in solder paste for ultra-high density interconnects (UHDI) and the challenges of working with smaller solder powder sizes. The pair also discusses the role of AI in electronics manufacturing and the future of PCB assembly. Tony brings his deep knowledge of materials science and the chemistry of electronics to this insightful discussion, providing valuable perspectives on industry trends and advanced packaging techniques. Tune in to learn about the exciting developments shaping the future of electronics manufacturing.

Discover the ideas behind the next generation of electronics engineers and the groundbreaking innovations they are driving. From designing circuits for space exploration to tackling challenges in PCB manufacturing, this video explores the journey today's young engineers undergo as they attempt to make their mark on advanced electronics. Join Paul Cooke, Director of Application Engineering at AGC Multi Materials, as he chats with host Tech Consultant Zach Peterson. Among other topics, the two explore:   - Insights into the future of electronics design.   - Workforce development challenges in the industry.   - The role of cutting-edge materials in Ultra HDI (UHDI) manufacturing.   **Key Takeaways:**   - Why young engineers should be excited about the electronics industry.   - The impact of innovation on industries like aerospace and AI.   - Strategies to thrive as an engineer in a high-tech world.    

Explore the revolutionary advancements of Ultra HDI in PCB design and manufacturing. In this episode of the Altium OnTrack Podcast, Zach Peterson sits down with Tara Dunn, Director of Training and Education at SMTA, to discuss how UHDI is reshaping the PCB industry.  Gain insights into its impact on design, fabrication, and assembly, and learn how to stay ahead in this rapidly evolving field.   **Highlights**:   - The future of Ultra HDI in PCB manufacturing   - Challenges and opportunities for PCB designers   - SMTA's role in fostering innovation and collaboration    

Welcome to Altium's OnTrack Podcast! In this episode, host Zach Peterson speaks with Sean Kincaid, President of K & F Electronics, about the complex realities of reshoring electronics manufacturing.  Explore why reshoring is about more than just production and delve into the challenges of materials, equipment, and supply chain dependencies. Sean shares his firsthand experience with PCB manufacturing and insights into America's manufacturing industry. 

In this episode of the Altium OnTrack Podcast, host Zach Peterson sits down with Keith Hanna, an Independent Consultant in CAE/PLM, to discuss the evolution of cross-disciplinary integration in engineering software, focusing on CAE (Computer-Aided Engineering) and EDA (Electronic Design Automation) industries.  The conversation explores themes like AI's role in the future of engineering, recent trends in mergers and acquisitions, and the broader implications of these changes for engineers and developers. Keith shares his insights from decades of experience, providing a deep dive into the challenges and opportunities within these rapidly converging fields.  

Progressive Analysts, George O'Connor and Ian Robertson's regular review of the technology sector, including an overview of Oxford Metrics full-year results, reported last week, and FD Technologies focussing on its KX database business. 00:00 - Introduction 01:15 - Oxford Metrics (OMG) 07:38 - FD Technologies (FDP) View Oxford Metrics (OMG) research here. About: George O'Connor has been a financial analyst for the past 25 years, covering London-listed Software & IT Services, e-comm and hardware companies. George has worked for a variety of firms including Albert E. Sharp, Panmure Gordon and Stifel where he researched and communicated investment cases, conducted IPOs, secondary placings and the odd rescue rights. George started his career at IT industry analysts IDC where over nine years he rose to become Research Manager. Ian Robertson has over two decades of experience in the smaller companies and technology sectors working as investor, analyst and advisor. Ian Started his career by qualifying as a chartered accountant before moving onto roles in corporate finance at EY and then fund management at Gartmore and RSA. Ian then moved across to sell-side equity research at HSBC and subsequently worked at a number of UK small-cap specialist brokers, including Altium, Evolution and Seymour Pierce. Find out more about Progressive Research here. Produced by Progressive Research, Distributed by PIWORLD

In this conversation, Antonio Becerra Esteban of CELUS discusses the integration of AI in hardware design workflows, focusing on how the CELUS design platform is freeing up hours for design engineers. We talk honestly about the challenges and opportunities AI presents for designers, particularly for component search and schematic design. The CELUS free tool and platform integrate with Altium, Eagle, and KiCAD. It will soon announce integration with another leading CAD tool!  

In this episode of the Altium OnTrack Podcast, Tech Consultant Zach Peterson and Phillip Gulley, co-founder of ‪@cofactr‬ chat about the critical topics of counterfeit detection and supply chain risks in the electronics industry. Recorded live at PCB West 2024, Phillip shares Cofactr's approach to managing procurement, logistics, and ensuring the authenticity of electronic components. Discover how Cofactr is helping companies tackle supply chain vulnerabilities by implementing rigorous counterfeit inspection methods, kitting solutions, and seamless integration with Altium 365.

Unlock the power of Altium 365 with automated requirements management! In this episode of the Altium OnTrack Podcast, host Zach Peterson sits down with Louise Linblad, VP of Product for Systems Engineering, and Gonçalo Ivo, Head of Product for Requirements & Systems Portal, to explore the revolutionary new tool for automating requirements within the Altium ecosystem. Discover how the Requirements & Systems Portal is designed to streamline workflows, reduce errors, and bring innovative solutions to life faster than ever before. Learn about the seamless integration of Valispace, and how this new feature is helping engineers connect requirements directly to CAD tools, enhancing collaboration and design accuracy. Whether you're a product manager, system engineer, or electronic engineer, this episode is packed with insights on boosting your engineering efficiency with Altium 365.  

Design for AI is at the forefront of the PCB design education revolution, driving a new era of innovation in how we approach electronics. In this episode of the Altium "OnTrack" podcast, Technical Consultant Zach Peterson sits down with John Watson, Altium's technical engineer and professor at Palomar Community College, to explore how AI is transforming the landscape of PCB design. Discover how partnerships, like the one between Altium and Mouser, are playing a pivotal role in educating a new generation of PCB designers across the globe. John and Zach discuss the integration of AI into PCB design education, its impact on students and professionals alike, and what the future holds for the industry.

Explore how Altium Education is empowering the next generation of hardware designers in India and across the globe. In this episode of the Altium OnTrack podcast, host Tech Consultant Zach Peterson explores scholarship opportunities, free training programs, and the partnership with Mouser Electronics to support students, particularly women, in the field of PCB design. Guests in this Episode: Rea Callendar, VP of Education at Altium, is a highly motivated results-oriented executive with an extensive background in educational leadership, strategic corporate development, and a passion for driving innovation in the education sector.  Connect with Rea here: recallender Watch Rea's Previous Episode:  Master the Basics of PCB Electronics Megha Kurup, HR VP for Asia-Pacific at Mouser, is a results-oriented professional with high productivity and strong desire for success with broad regional and global HR experience to help support Organizations expanding business across Asia-Pacific.   Resources from this Episode:   - Altium Student Labs: https://www.altium.com/education/students - Altium Education Center: https://www.altium.com/education/educators - India Student Page: https://www.altium.com/in/education/students   Exclusive 15 Days Free Altium Designer Access: https://www.altium.com/promotions/altium-academy  

Masha Petrova, CEO of Nullspace, a simulation software company joins the latest episode of the Marketing B2B Technology podcast to share her journey from aspiring astronaut to engineering expert and marketing leader. She delves into the importance of effective marketing when targeting technical audiences and discusses the challenges of mergers and acquisitions in the engineering software industry. The conversation also explores current engineering tools, the role of AI in accelerating technological advancements, and the need for efficient simulation software.   About Nullspace Nullspace is a deep tech software company that develops products and solutions for RF and quantum computing applications across defense, aerospace, and automotive industries.   About Masha Petrova Dr. Petrova is an experienced executive with a passion for leading multi-disciplinary global teams toward successful results by focusing on operations and creating a unified vision. After receiving her PhD in aerospace engineering, Dr. Petrova spent 15+ years in the engineering simulation and design software industry, including holding global marketing executive roles at Ansys, Altium, LLC, and MSC Software (during acquisition by Hexagon MI) as well as 3 simulation software start-ups all acquired by Ansys, Inc. in the last 10 years.   Time Stamps [00:46:2] – Masha provides some background to her career and what led her to become CEO of Nullspace. [01:50.2] - Masha discusses EDA and simulation tools. [03:22:0] – Masha explains the impact of acquisitions on marketers and CMOs. [09:42:2] – Masha talks about how to balance the demands of wanting to get leads and drive sales quickly with the longer term goal of building a strong brand. [18:34:9] – Masha discusses how she deals with the issue of sustainability. [24:52:3] – Masha gives her best advice to those entering a career in marketing. [26:24:1] – Masha's contact details.   Quotes “Because of AI, there is a lot of acceleration in technology itself that's happening… but the tools that the engineers use are still kind of stuck in the past. These are still conservative tools that's been tested and validated for over 40, 30 years. So, it's like using a hammer to build a car.” Masha Petrova, CEO of Nullspace. "Measuring brand effectiveness is really hard. It's not like lead generation, where you can track from inception to a sales deal. With brand, it's much subtler, so we tracked our spend versus views, comments, and social media engagement to demonstrate interest in our content." Masha Petrova, CEO of Nullspace.   Follow Masha: Masha Petrova on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mashavpetrova/ Nullspace website: https://www.nullspaceinc.com/ Nullspace on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nullspace-inc/   Follow Mike: Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/ Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/ Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/   If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing B2B Tech and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We'd also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform. Want more? Check out Napier's other podcast - The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547

Ananth Avva is “a big believer that if you give human beings the right type of information and you contextualize it, they will make the right decision ultimately for the organization.” In his current role at Altium as the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cloud Platform, he is leading efforts to improve and accelerate collaboration because “collaboration trumps everything else” as it drives speed to market, lower costs, and more efficient development. He has seen companies attempt to transition engineering teams to software-as-a-service (SaaS). In his experience, “that usually goes sideways pretty fast.” With Altium 365, Avva and his team are trying to seamlessly bring SaaS into engineering. Their goals are to enable what they call shifting left and shifting right. When shifting left, they aim to take decisions that were traditionally late in the product life cycle and move those requirements earlier in the design process. This can allow the procurement, operations, compliance, and manufacturing teams to provide vital context for better design decisions. Similarly, shifting right passes design information downstream more quickly to avoid costly delays or respins. If your organization is developing electronic products, you will benefit from this Moore's Lobby podcast discussion hosted by Daniel Bogdanoff. Avva explains that companies consistently overestimate the cost of change and underestimate the benefits. They may also have the wrong “whys” behind why not to change. He goes on to explain that these can be “a bit of a phantom menace.” In his opinion, these are changes all companies will need to make to remain competitive in the market: Let's say you don't do it. The world is headed that way anyway, so what happens? Let's fast-forward five years, you're gonna have to do it.

Dave and Chris talk about the letdown of signing an NDA and seeing "behind the curtain". Also inverters, programming tools, pricing changes at Altium, and old school web stuff.

On this episode we speak with Dr. Masha Petrova, the CEO of Nullspace, Inc. a company creating simulation software for electromagnetic applications in the Academic, Commercial, Aerospace, and Defense Industries. Masha shares with us her STEM origin story from a childhood love of Soviet Space SciFi to becoming a PhD Simulation Engineer in the US, which led to her "aha" moment of realizing she was actually an "Extroverted Engineer". Dr. Petrova is an experienced executive with a passion for leading multi-disciplinary global teams toward successful results by focusing on operations and creating a unified vision. After receiving her PhD in aerospace engineering, Dr. Petrova spent 15+ years in the engineering simulation and design software industry, including holding global marketing executive roles at Ansys, Altium, LLC, and  IncMSC Software (during acquisition by Hexagon MI) as well as 3 simulation software start-ups all acquired by Ansys, Inc. in the last 10 years. Thank you to Masha for joining us on the podcast, sharing her STEM Origin Story, and for a fun discussion about Start-up life, "Freedom", SciFi, Deep Tech, and AI. A great episode that I HIGHLY recommend listening to, especially for anyone who wants to get into STEM or currently trying to find their place in it. Topics from the episode: engineer, company, engineering, space, software, build, electromagnetics, people, ai, problem, simulate, startup, develop, tools, simulation, technology, solver, extrovert We'd love to know your thoughts and questions! Email us at todayinspacepodcast@gmail.com SOURCES: https://www.nullspaceinc.com/ The 'Topics from the episode' above and the timestamps below for the episode were generated using AI (otter.ai) by processing the audio file. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction - What is People of Science? 01:00 Our Guest Dr. Masha Petrova, CEO of Nullspace shares her STEM Origin Story 08:28 Tech Industry, Career Progression, and the "4-Hour Workweek"  14:03 Creativity, Autonomy, and building systems in various roles 18:58 Soviet Science Fiction and Space Exploration 26:48 RF Engineering & Software Development 32:23 3D printing, Software for Additive, and Quantum Computing 42:27 AI, Acquisitions, and Infrastruture online and in Space 56:15 Space Engineering and the Future of Work w/ AI  -------------------------- Here's to building a fantastic future - and continued progress in Space (and humanity)! Spread Love, Spread Science Alex G. Orphanos We'd like to thank our sponsors: AG3D Printing Magic Mind (magicmind.com use code TODAYINSPACE20 for 20% OFF or up to 56% off subscription) Follow us: @todayinspacepod on Instagram/Twitter @todayinspace on TikTok /TodayInSpacePodcast on Facebook  Support the podcast: MAGIC MIND (magicmind.com/learn) AND use my code: TODAYINSPACE20 More ways to support us: • Buy a 3D printed gift from our shop - ag3dprinting.etsy.com • Get a free quote on your next 3D printing project at ag3d-printing.com • Donate at todayinspace.net #space #rocket #podcast #people #spacex #moon #science #3dprinting #nasa #tothemoon #spacetravel #spaceexploration #solarsystem #spacecraft #technology #carlsagan #aerospace #spacetechnology #engineer #stem #ai #industry #entrepreneurship #artemis #lunar# 3dprinting #integrate #create

In this episode of The OnTrack Podcast, Tech Consultant Zach Peterson chats with the co-founders of Valispace, Louise Lindblad and Marco Witzmann. Valispace is revolutionizing the engineering world by transforming system design tools, making them more efficient, connected, and capable of handling the complex requirements of today's engineering challenges.    Learn how, from satellite engineering to the intricate demands of aerospace and beyond, Valispace's unique approach empowers engineers to build better, more innovative products by bridging the gap between requirements, design, and implementation.  Key Highlights: Louise & Marco's Backgrounds: Introduction of Louise and Marco, highlighting their professional backgrounds and expertise. Valispace Background & Intent: Overview of the origins of Valispace, including the initial purpose and intentions behind its development. Spreadsheet Pains: Discussion on the challenges and limitations associated with using spreadsheets for engineering and project management tasks. Further Resources: Connect with Louise and Marco on LinkedIn Watch this webinar to learn more about the Altium 365 requirements manager powered by Valispace Exclusive 15 Days Free Altium Designer Access

There's a secret AI war brewing. In this episode of Chip Stock Investor's mini-series on Japan's revitalized semiconductor industry, we focus on integrated device manufacturer Renesas' efforts to bolster its position in the global chip market. Besides resurrecting closed factories and entering significant supply and collaboration deals, Renesas' acquisition spree aimed at expanding its capabilities in semiconductor design and AI inference – especially the recently announced purchase of Altium – are of particular interest. We also discuss the broader semiconductor manufacturing scene in Japan, how that shifts the dynamics in future AI training and inference chip demand, and the implications of electronic design automation (EDA) acquisitions for the future of AI technologies. Our video underscores the strategic consolidations in the EDA market, positioning Renesas as a key player in the impending AI inference expansion. Chapters: 00:00 Unveiling the Secret AI War and Japan's Semiconductor Surge 00:22 Deep Dive into Renesas: Japan's Semiconductor IDM 05:56 Renesas' Strategic Moves: Acquisitions and Market Expansion 09:59 The EDA Market Shake-Up: Renesas' Bold Strategy 14:56 AI's Next Frontier: Training, Inference, and the EDA Connection 21:24 Renesas' Acquisition Spree 24:05 Wrapping Up: Japan's Semiconductor Renaissance Videos referenced: Nick's discussion of Japan's dominance last year: https://youtu.be/HtaQWfYeIHk?si=Qr1baj2_vDpjS6x4 Asianometry video:https://youtu.be/Nk-lBok9_TU?si=Ov_F3mI6L-A4Ta_f On Wolfspeed: https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/07/13/wolfspeed-lands-renewable-energy-chip-deals-but-ar/ https://youtu.be/GMWSKEKWibY Synopsys to Acquire Ansys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLuq-CR5pd4 Cadence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJse8YwVRVU Keysight Technologies: https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/01/30/with-the-synopsys-mega-merger-on-the-horizon-does/

The chat about one of the most incredible stories in Australian tech history - the $9 billion sale of Altium, the problems facing $100 billion giant AirBNB, Qantas new Chairman, Woolworth's former CEO and should Adir be spending $9 on a small juice?

Episode Webpage with all the charts : https://go.tribeglobal.vc/podcast/episode-39-tribe-talkin-ep-29-canva-cfo  In todays episode of Tribe Talkin':  Canva's CFO Damien Singh resigns:  Tegan Jones of Smart Company first article. Bronwen Clune  of Capital Brief first article.  Tess Bennett and Jessica Sier of AFR article. Tegan Jones of Smart Company second article.  Bronwen Clune  of Capital Brief second article.  Jessica Sier and Paul Smith of AFR article. David Swan of SMH article.  Bronwen Clune of Capital Brief Toxic Positivity. Lucy Wark LinkedIn post.  ​​​​​​​ Ansarada acquired for $263 Million. Altium take over offer from Japan's Renesas. Haris Qureshi provides a great tech summary Three Aussie startups that raised $198.4 million this week: Bugcrowd: $156 million. Diraq: $23 million. Marqo: $19.4 million. Fat Zebra (undisclosed).  Gilmore Space raises $55 million.  Zuck not going down without a fight with Apple's new Vision Pro. Interesting medical use cases for Vision Pro . Zuck may be missing the point.  AI boom continues: OpenAI Sora. Google upgraded Gemini. Nvidia releasing Chat with RTX. Where is this all heading? Michael Jackson provides a summary of the "AI is like Water" article by Morgan Beller.  Taylor Swift provides some lessons in a world of falls 20%.  Nvida has big shoes to fill from a valuation point of view.  Markets are melting up.    - Listener feedback which we very much appreciate Hello@tribeglobal.vc

Dave and Chris talk through Renesas acquiring Altium and all its implications. Also Dave gives a history of Altium and they discuss how the industry might change (or not).

Today we're diving head-first into Altium's New Constraint Manager with Andy Critcher, Director at Total Board Solutions. This revolutionary feature is designed to streamline and optimize the process of applying design constraints across multiple nets, making it easier and more intuitive than ever.   If you're dealing with high-voltage designs, complex multi-layer boards, or simply looking to enhance productivity, the new Constraint Manager offers a suite of tools that promise to elevate your design workflow.   Join Andy and host Tech Consultant Zach Peterson as they chat the ins and outs of this innovative feature, including industry responses, practical applications, and a detailed exploration of how it can simplify your design process.   Key Highlights: Andy's Background: Insight into Andy's experience and expertise in the industry. Advice for Young People Entering the Industry: Key advice for newcomers navigating the field. Fusion of EE and PCB Layout Positions? Discussion on the evolving roles within the industry. Eye-Opening Fab Facility Visits: Experiences and revelations from visiting fabrication facilities. Altium Designer's New Constraint Manager Overview: Overview and benefits of Altium Designer's Constraint Manager update. Links & Resources: Follow Andy on LinkedIn Learn more about Altium Designer's New Constraint Manager Interested in becoming a PCB designer? Read this article to learn more about entering the field. PCB Library Management from Total Board Solutions 

Altium Limited is an American - Australian multinational software company that provides electronic design automation software to engineers who design printed circuit boards. So if you're unfamiliar, think of a microchip, with all the little wires and transistors on it, this software helps design those. As you can imagine, it's applicable to many, many industries. To break down this company today, we're joined by Jun Bei Liu - Portfolio Manager at Tribeca Investment Partners.The Equity Mates Summer Series is proud to partner with CommSec, the home of investing. Often we get frustrated with the lack of access to international markets, particularly when there are so many great opportunities outside of Australia. However, with CommSec those opportunities are a reality, with access to 13 international markets, from the US, to Norway, Germany and Japan. Invest in shares on the US Market from just $5 USD brokerage. Download the CommSec app today or visit commsec.com.au. CommSec T&Cs and other fees and charges apply. Investing in overseas markets exposes you to additional risk.If you want to go beyond the podcast and learn more, check out our accompanying email. Buy a copy of Don't Stress, Just Invest now, click here.You could win $500 by filling out our EM Community Survey. Click here.*****In the spirit of reconciliation, Equity Mates Media and the hosts of Equity Mates Investing Podcast acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today. *****This episode contained sponsored content from Commsec*****Equity Mates Investing Podcast is a product of Equity Mates Media. This podcast is intended for education and entertainment purposes. Any advice is general advice only, and has not taken into account your personal financial circumstances, needs or objectives. Before acting on general advice, you should consider if it is relevant to your needs and read the relevant Product Disclosure Statement. And if you are unsure, please speak to a financial professional. Equity Mates Media operates under Australian Financial Services Licence 540697.Equity Mates is part of the Acast Creator Network. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the OnTrack Podcast, we explore the innovative BOM Portal in Altium 365, a cutting-edge tool transforming PCB design and electronic development. Tech Consultant Zach Peterson sits down with Ananth Avva, General Manager at Altium's Cloud Platform, and Damir Khayrutdinov, Product Manager at Altium, to discuss the tool.  Altium's BOM Portal, compared to ActiveBOM, offers a seamless and efficient approach to managing bill of materials (BOM) throughout the product lifecycle. We dive deep into the capabilities and features of the BOM Portal, including its integration with various CAD tools and its role in streamlining design-to-realization processes. Learn from our guests about the trends and challenges in electronics development and how Altium Designer 24's BOM Portal addresses these issues.  Key Highlights Discussion on trends in electronics development Reasons for building the BOM Portal on Altium 365 Challenges in BOM management and how the BOM Portal addresses them Insights into the relationship between ActiveBOM and the BOM Portal, how it works, customer response, future developments, multi-board systems, and the future vision for Altium 365 Resources and Links Follow Ananth Avva and Damir Khayrutdinov on LinkedIn Learn More about BOM Portal Here How to 'Shift Left' and Connect Procurement and Engineering? Altium 365 BOM Portal Step-by-Step BOM Portal Webinar Transcript Zach:  Some of the features that you just mentioned sounds a bit like ActiveBOM in Altium Designer and I think the more experienced Altium Designer users out there will notice this. So, how exactly does this new tool compare with ActiveBOM? Does it replace it or does it complement it? Damir Khayrutdinov: Yeah, it's a good question. ActiveBOM is a BOM tool what was designed to help engineering team release design BOMs with all needed information and capabilities such as adding alternates, line numbers, custom lines, et cetera. And seems it works well based on level of adoption and user feedback. However, it's embedded into the design tool, Altium Designer. Zach: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Altium OnTrack podcast. I'm your host, Zach Peterson. Today, we're talking with Ananth Avva, General Manager of Altium's cloud business and Damir Khayrutdinov, Product Manager at Altium. We're gonna be discussing one of the new features in Altium Designer 24 and that feature is the BOM Portal. I got to see a short demo of it before this episode and so I'm very excited about this new feature and I hope all of you will be as well. Damir and Ananth, thank you so much for joining me today. Ananth Avva: Yeah, likewise. Great to be here, Zach. Zach: So, what are some of the trends and problems that you're seeing in the electronics development space, Ananth? Ananth Avva: Yeah. So, I think the common root cause is the velocity of the actual development process continues to accelerate and the proliferation of electronics as everyone probably listening to the podcast, they're no stranger to that. But I think that's the root cause but the symptoms show up and I would say in three different areas. The first one is, sort of, mapping requirements and intent to the actual design. So, when you start going from functional to physical to actually the layout, are you actually bringing those requirements all the way through, right? The second one, while in the post Covid era, we've seen supply chain, et cetera, settle down. Supply chain, and also just compliance for components 'cause that's still about 40% to 70% of what you're building is a big area of focus especially as we're getting into whether it be geopolitical tensions in the Red Sea, all the way to trying to understand your actual full traceability of where the components coming from down to the fabrication plant. So, that's a very big area of focus, especially for our aero military customers. The third area, I would say, is getting into some of these emerging themes like sustainability and getting down to what is the footprint of what I'm making and 80% of, sort of, the sustainability aspects is done in design. And so, bringing some of those thoughts, especially when you're thinking about your BOM and you're thinking about, sort of, orchestrating your entire supply chain, that's come up and starting to come up, especially with DPP requirements coming in Europe. And lastly, it's the collaboration with manufacturing. So, we deal a lot for obvious reasons with designers and that handoff process and making sure that the manufacturers and the components that they're selecting versus what was in design and then people are moving lockstep. That continues to be a big focus. But all of these four areas are sort of the symptoms but the root cause is, again, just the velocity with which development's happening. Zach: Well, given the velocity that you've mentioned, it sounds like that was part of the motivation behind building a lot of these new features in Altium Designer 24. So, what was the motivation behind building the BOM Portal on Altium 365? Ananth Avva: Yeah, I think with Altium Designer, I mean that's obviously where we have our design audience, but we wanted to build a front end where other folks can come in and start collaborating and very specifically, your component, sort of, manufacturing personnels or even the masses where they're able to actually get that visibility. I think of, sort of, that BOM as the first, sort of, physical manifestation where the design is actually born, right? You're in the design to realization space, that's the first front end that everyone can actually look at and collaborate on. And so, the motivation for doing this in the cloud and basically having this sort of abstraction layer out of AD because one of the key things is, the BOM Portal, while, you know, it's highly functional and highly integrated into Altium Designer, it's mixed CAD. So, we'll actually work with all the CAD tools. And so, we really wanted to make sure that we have that one front end where it's not just for designers but it's also for all of the other satellite professionals that they touch and they're able to come in and collaborate to ensure all the issues that we just talked about in the electronic development process. We have a way to mitigate those risks and have those participants come in and basically get that view and also basically get the ability to edit and collaborate on the design itself. Zach: So, since we're here to learn a bit more about the BOM Portal tool, Damir, maybe you can tell us what are some of the BOM management challenges that you've seen across the industry that inspired your team and the development of this new tool? Damir Khayrutdinov: In addition to the standard challenges and BOM and supply chain management for electronics such as chip shortage and second sourcing, we noticed that the processes and tools used for that are mostly from 90s. Most still use Excel files and emails for that. So, to get the PCB BOM ready for ordering, the procurement team works with exported Excel BOMs. This process typically involves four, five emails with collaboration about three or four contributors who are responsible to make decision. Yeah. So, this takes time to interact and because of the friction happens later in the process, cost of the work, time and money wise, is more expensive. Of course, there are companies who well adopted with POM MRP and the ERP systems, but even the company implemented such systems, the level of its adoption is different. So, we track the cases when engineering use POM PDM, but procurement still works with Excel, shared drives, et cetera. Another common problem is fragmented approach to accessing and analyzing technical specifications, compliance information and supply chain data. Typically, procurement expert quality engineers and compliance specialists have to navigate through multiple platforms to gather necessary details about parts. The result in scattered data, yeah, manage it across different systems, often leading to limited access to all of these team members. And we can talk also about product teams and OEM specifically. For such teams, the BOM management is not finished once the BOM is released. You should be aware of the manufacturability of your released PCB BOM during the end customer warranty period or product production cycle, which might be not just a few weeks or years. So, for such teams, BOM management is an interactive process that is time consuming and error prone due to constantly changing supply chain. For such teams, the manufacturability is a function of a time. So, the release BOMs needs to be constantly monitored. And in order to manage that, most of the teams still use manual processes for that which is not so effective. So, I would highlight these three common challenges which are at across the industry. Zach:Yeah, you mentioned Excel files and emails. I will admit I'm guilty of that one, but I think it's because of the lack of anything better and everybody else does it. So, you're kind of shoehorned into doing this because there just hasn't been anything better really. So, given all of those issues that you brought up, how does BOM Portal help solve some of those challenges? Damir Khayrutdinov: Yeah. In short, the BOM Portal helps to take advantage of rich parts and supply chain information to scrap BOM and identify risks from multiple angels. It might be availability, it might be cost, it might be compliance, second sourcing, et cetera. Next is the collaboration aspect, which is, I would say, one of the core features of the A 365 platform. So, with the BOM Portal, you can get the advantage of constant platform for engineering and procurement team in one, so no exported files without context anymore and you have a common collaboration process in one. And third, I would say that we didn't really use it, but it's a parts watchdog feature which is currently in the closed beta, but it helps to deduce supply chain risk and ensures continuous production by proactively tracking and providing warnings for supply chain issues, prompting timely action to avoid any disruptions. Of course, we still offer parts traceability or we call it very usage which simplifies the identification and assessment for potential absolute issues. So, these three things. Zach: You know, some of the features that you just mentioned sound a bit like ActiveBOM in Altium Designer and I think the more experienced Altium Designer users out there will notice this. So, how exactly does this new tool compare with ActiveBOM? Does it replace it or does it compliment it? Ananth Avva: Yeah, it's a good question. ActiveBOM is a BOM tool what was designed to help engineering team release design BOMs with all needed information and capabilities such as adding alternates, line numbers, custom lines, et cetera. And seems it works well based on level of adoption and user feedback. However, it's embedded into the design tool, Altium Designer. And ActiveBOM has a strong dependency on the design data. So, in order to use it for procurement, you need to share design, all design and provide access to the design tool. Next is that it helps on the design stage but not beyond it. For example, you can create the ordering from multiple PCBs which need to be assembled. It's also not effective to use in a production stage. For example, in order to add additional alternates suggested by your contract manufacturer, you need to release the wall design in ActiveBOM. The BOM Portal is designed to support BOM management in all electronic product lifecycle stage. So, in addition to the generic BOM tool capabilities for scrapping, it includes capabilities need to control obsolescent for the released boards, compliance management and part search capabilities, especially for alternate search. So, it's definitely not just a BOM tool, not just a BOM editor as ActiveBOM is. Zach:So, if we could, let's dig into how the BOM Portal works. Can you make this a bit more tangible for our listeners. Damir Khayrutdinov: As I mentioned, the BOM Portal provides benefits for the different roles and support BOM management in all lifecycle stage. We can start from the early design stage where BOM Portal can speed up the process of prototype BOM scrubbing and preparing it for purchasing. I can share my screen and just share how it works. Zach: So, we're looking at Altium 365 right now and I see a bunch of projects you have on screen. Damir Khayrutdinov: So, I have this proto design. It has just version 1.1. If I open it, it'll open it in a separate tab. I believe you still see it. And here is a viewer, online viewer, which is available in A 365. There is schematic viewer, PCB viewer and of course, bill of material. And as you can see, engineering was focused only on critical parts. So, there is no any part numbers specified for generics such as capacitors or resistors, et cetera. And in order to prepare it for purchasing, we have the capability to create a managed BOM from the design and scrap it without touching of engineering data, which might be critical for some cases. Yeah. So, once I click to create a managed BOM from design, procurement is able to select what ORM should be used. We also support it. And once the bill of material will be created, it'll be stored at the same folder as original design. So, it takes a minute. Yeah. So, we can refresh the page and here is my BOM which I just created. If I click on the original design, you will see that now I have a child BOMs and link to this procurement BOM created from the design. So, let's open this bill of material. And what we see? We see exactly the same bill of material what was created by engineering, but for the part numbers which are not specified, we see this lamp icon which means that exact map is not defined and it's true. We don't have exact part number for this BOM line, but BOM Portal try to analyze all information about this BOM line, about this component, and it has some suggestions. So, if I click on this lamp, you see that BOM Portal suggested multiple parts which has parameters specified in BOM line and they are colored with green. In order to see all parameters, we can switch to the advanced parametric search and we see what data is actually was analyzed and used in order to help engineering work with procurement actually find parts. So, you will see that BOM Portal analyzed designator and description and track that this is capacitor. The capacitance is 100 nanofarad. We detected voltage rating, we tracked the case package and we have suggestions. As a procurement, I will pick up just a component which is in stock with minimum order quantity which is also shared here and in stock. Yeah. I would pick up this one. No, it's not a good because we have not recommended for new design. I will pick up this one and click Use. In this manner I can scrap all my BOM and also, I can even improve it. You see that there is one part which was specified by engineering has obsolete lifecycle state. Maybe it's good for the prototyping because this part is in stock et cetera. But as procurement I will try to find alternate and just notify engineering that there is another component available in the market. And how I will do this and how BOM Portal help me is that we have try alternate search mode which provide alternates specifically found for this original part number and we have confidence core which means that from this information, you can understand how this part is compatible with the original one. So, this is how BOM Portal can speed up the process on BOM scrubbing for proto BOMs. And other case, what I would like to share with you is prepare BOM for production run. For this, I have this bill of material which is available in my- Yeah, I just exported it to Excel file. It has just a few columns, designator, quantity, manufacturer and MPN and some of the BOM lines have alternates defined. So, let's upload this Excel file into the BOM Portal and see how it will work with it. So, one second. Demo version 5. Yeah. Once this BOM file will be uploaded into the BOM Portal, it'll be automatically under the version and revision control as any other managed design, which is also a benefit for data management things. So, I have these BOM file uploaded. I open it in BOM Portal. BOM Portal ask me if there are alternates is defined? I will say yes because we don't know what exact means these lines which means designators. And here is it. So, we enrich. What BOM Portal did? It enriched the data which was available in the original BOM file. You see, the same four columns. But additionally, you can see all data provided by our data provider. So, in my case, I use pro-level subscription with SiliconExpert integration and I can use both of them in my BOM scrubbing. So, you can see that I have two lifecycle columns, one is getting from IHS Markit, another one from SiliconExpert. And for some cases, it's quite useful. For example, for this part, IHS Markit doesn't know about any- There is no any information about lifecycle, but SiliconExpert has it. Another example is with one of the challenges on scribing BOM for production run is adding alternates, is adding alternates to non stop production run on your contract manufacturer. And the BOM Portal has this capability to add alternates from different sources. For example, for this case, we will use alternates defined in my library, which means that it's company approved alternates. So, they were previously tested and approved to be used in my company. So, I will just click on add additional, add alternate online and we'll see all alternates, a little bit for this BOM line for this component. I see alternates from my library and I also see additional alternates which is coming from data providers. So, I will use this one. Next is, that usually, production run is not going for one or multiple BOMs. Yeah, you can have a production run with a thousand of boards and we can check is there any issues related to the production run to the number of production quantity. Yeah. Let's put 10,000 and check what we'll have. In issue step, I see that we have supply chain issues that some of the BOM lines have insufficient stock which might be also a problem for my production run. And how can I fix that? I have favorite suppliers and I see estimated BOM coverage coverage. So, I will just use additional suppliers here and we'll see that some of the problems have gone after that. So, right now, I see that out of stock only one part or insufficient stock only two. So, in this manner, we can scrap and prepare BOM for production run, and once it'll be ready, we can release it. And next, we can do comparison with original BOM files. So, these capabilities, it's not allowed in just in ActiveBOM tool. Yeah. And the last one what I would like to mention is how the BOM Portal can help for obsoleteness teams or quality teams. So, as I mentioned previously, we have this used parts report or parts watchdog, which is currently on beta. But what it can do? So, it grab all parts used in all my PCB BOMs and share risk information in one simple page. So, for example, I can be focused only for the critical parts and... One second. Yeah. I have this filter by component type. So, right now, I see all used parts in my workspace. I can filter out them by, for example, ICs and easily see what the status is for IC components in my workspace, in my products. One I see has discounted lifecycle states, and here, I also see in what projects, so I easily can identify what projects affected by this issue. So, this is how BOM Portal can help and speed up process on BOM scrubbing and help to mitigate supply chain risks. Zach: So, you mentioned earlier one of the very interesting features is grading of alternates or replacements. And I have to be honest, that is something where I have spent a lot of time trying to find either an alternate source through a broker when something is out of stock or just a totally replacement part. And it's really hard to find something that will work sometimes that won't force you to go back in and change the PCB layout before you start producing something. So, I have to ask, are the replacements being graded based on pin compatibility or are there other dimensions that are being used to grade the replacements? Damir Khayrutdinov: So, we utilize the supply chain data and parts data provided by allowed data providers. So, here we currently have Octopart, IHS Markit, SiliconExpert and soon, also Z2Data will be also supported. So, the confidence score provided by Octopart and IHS is just a basic rating from one to zero on how well a component will work as an alternate. SiliconExpert, however, provides a detailed grading system that evaluates component based it on various parameters. For example, rating A means that it's a pin to pin compatible replacement with exact electrical features. So, my answer is that depends on the data providers supported in your workspace, you will be able to use data providers, you will be use data provided by data providers uploaded to your workspace and alternates is also shared by these data providers. So, we have confidence score from our partners. So, it's not a data which was calculated on the file for example. Zach: So, I have to ask what are customers saying about the BOM Portal? Damir Khayrutdinov: One of the comments we have gotten from some customer is that BOM Portal allows them to replace their homegrown systems that needs custom development and maintenance. This shows us that we are really on the right track. Our customers already invested a lot to have their common custom solutions done. Still, this is not their core competency. Here, we are coming with as an electronic focused company with long history of successful software development. Another comment is that they want more meaning that we covered single BOM use case pretty extensively and now people wants to get multi-BOM use cases. We're working on the actively sought part reports I just shared with you and now we started project called Consolidated BOM which will allow users to optimize procurement for a given product, not just a single PCB board. Also, we would like to stress that we are really counting on customers feedback. We are proud to develop solutions to get positive feedback from our customers. It's not to say that we are fully bottom up as we do have a vision where we want to take the product, but we are bottom up enough to give our users flexibility they need. So, please to try BOM Portal and provide feedback so we can take this to the next level. Zach: So, regarding your vision for this tool, what are some of the future developments that are planned for it? Damir Khayrutdinov: The top end request is ability to work on a level of multiple BOMs versus a single board BOM. I already mentioned that we started project called Consolidated BOM. Another area is integration with ERP and POM, which is requested mostly by enterprise guys. And pretty constantly, we are getting requests about BOM review workflow. This is another example where our customers start developing their own solutions as there is nothing flexible enough on the market available. Zach: Just to clarify something, you said multiple BOMs. Would that be for, like, a multi-board system? Damir Khayrutdinov: Yeah. But I would just highlight that there is a case called consolidated BOM for ordering, when procurement expert needs to order parts for multiple BOMs which might be not used in one product. Yeah. You have separate PCBs just needs to be assembled. But another case is multi-board BOM, which is a part of the product. And this is a kind of next thread and it also in our roadmap, but it'll be implemented with a multilevel and multi-PCB BOM approach. Zach: So, I have another question here for Ananth. We've spent a lot of time talking about and learning about the BOM Portal, but, of course, it is part of Altium 365. So, if you could, could you talk about the future vision for Altium 365 more broadly? Ananth Avva: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think in the opening of the podcast, we talked about some of the areas of challenge and I think the goal for Altium 365 is to basically bridge the idea to realization processes, right? As evidenced by the BOM Portal, one of the first areas that we're focused on is bringing data and the right data in context. So, bringing the requirements in, so capturing the intent is going to come up here pretty quickly where we're going to have requirements tool that's specifically built for electronics. Those requirements then will automatically not just map into design but also start going into supply chain decisions. So, one of the questions that you had asked, Zach, on, well, is it going to a pin level? If that's a key requirement, we can actually make that as a trigger or a rule in the BOM Portal. And then, the next step is, obviously, then going into EMSS and tightening, sort of, our collaboration layers with EMSS where they can come in and engage. So, I think the first step that we're doing is building the right front end to have the common data layer that traverses, sort of, the decisions that are being made from start to the finish. The second is building a system of engagement on top of that system of record. So, what do I mean by that? All of these co-pilot/suggestion style interfaces that you're seeing with BOM Portal where we're reducing the cognitive load on whether you're a procurement professional or whether you're an engineer and actually ensuring that cognitive load is symmetrical, like, meaning just because I'm going to make a change or an engineer makes a change in the design, having the ability to either put cost constraints on them or vice versa, right, because you had to do something at the PCB level and the procurement team needs to know that now, the overall cost of the particular board has changed. Bringing those types of decision support tools and making this a system of engagement where people are actively collaborating to an outcome as opposed to just, sort of, for the sake of collaboration where you're getting visibility. That's something that we're working on and we're already seeing where for every, sort of, PCB designer that we have or for every two to three PCB designers. We have one non PCB designer coming into 365 and engaging. And this is everywhere from software engineers to mechanical engineers, to component folks, to procurement folks, to manufacturing engineers. So, bringing all those roles and bringing the right context in which they can engage, that's the second piece. And then the last piece is we have the system of record and you have the system of engagement. That's where context based AI applications become incredibly powerful, right? So, obviously, some of the things that we're looking at is, can you look at the data sheet and can you mine, sort of, the parametric information. The data sheet in terms of the quality assurance that Damir said where, yeah, there's third party tools like SiliconExpert that are doing it, but what about the right type of winning combinations, right? So, if you're going into a system level modular design, maybe, as you're building out the BOM and now that we understand the layout map, that we understand the functional requirements, we're now able to actually give you a suggestion on here's the right winning combinations, "that give you the best performance at the best cost" from a particular component manufacturer. So, a lot of what we're doing right now is, sort of, foundational to start building that system of engagement where folks are coming in and servicing the right front ends and reducing the cognitive load. And once we understand the behaviors and once we understand what's happening, we'll obviously bring more "AI based applications" that will continue to accelerate that. Zach: So, this all sounds very exciting and I'm excited to see it all develop. Damir, how can anyone who is interested in all of this learn more about the BOM Portal and try it for themselves? Ananth Avva: Yeah. The best way is try it yourself. Everyone is invited to a free evaluation by going to our BOM Portal webpage and the free three hour is on top of this page. You just put your email and get evaluation. We also have a BOM Portal webinar on January 24th in Europe and on January 25th in the United States where we will talk in greater detail about BOM Portal and give you a demonstration of the use cases we discussed today. So, welcome to our webinar. Zach: Yeah. And anyone who's interested, make sure to take a look at the show notes and you'll see some links where you can learn more about the BOM Portal and access some great resources. Thank you both so much for being here today and discussing this. In my opinion, this is a really exciting feature and I think it's gonna be a great productivity booster for engineering teams. To everyone that's out there listening, we've been talking with Damir Khayrutdinov, Product Manager at Altium, and Ananth Avva, General Manager of Altium's cloud business. Make sure to check out the show notes. You'll find some links to some great resources where you can learn more about the BOM Portal. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to hit the subscribe button and hit the like button. You'll be able to keep up with all of our podcast episodes and tutorials as they come out. And last but not least, don't stop learning, stay on track, and we'll see you next time. Thanks, everybody.

Explore the world of harness design with Michał Topolski, product manager at Altium, in this episode of the Altium OnTrack podcast. Learn about the two main aspects of harness design—multi-board and harness design itself—and how they are interconnected. Michał delves into the integration with MCAD tools, the importance of data integrity, and the positive user reactions during the open beta phase. Discover the features and improvements in harness design and get a sneak peek into what the future holds for this tool.   Key Highlights: Multi-Board & Harness Design: Explore the synergy between multi-board and harness design, unraveling the interconnected world of these crucial aspects. Harness Design Overview: Gain insights into the fundamentals of harness design, delving into the significance of BOM and the development rationale. Hands-On with Harness Design: Take a closer look at the practical aspects of harness design, understanding its physical dimensions and the seamless integration with Altium Designer. Altium Designer Harness Design Integration: Discover the efficiency gains by eliminating back-and-forth processes through Altium Designer's integrated harness design features. User Reaction and Workflow Improvements: Hear about the overwhelmingly positive user reactions during the open beta phase and explore the workflow improvements that redefine the design experience. Transcript Zach Peterson: So with a harness design, I think people might think of that as like probably two possible things. One might be like a custom cable assembly, one might be a custom connector housing or maybe an off-the-shelf housing that has custom wiring that is built into it. Maybe it's hand assembled, maybe it's factory assembled. But you probably have a bunch of wires spanning between two or more connectors. And then you need to integrate that into the project somehow. Is that correct? Michał Topolski: Yes, that's precisely it. And we support both of these ways. So you can just have a off-the-Shelf cable connection and you can have it listed in BOM as a single item or you can have your own harnessing wiring drawn and have have it manufactured custom. Zach Peterson: Hello, everyone and welcome to the Altium OnTrack podcast. I'm your host Zach Peterson. Today I'm talking with Michal Topolski, the product manager here at Altium. As I said in a previous episode, it is that time of the year where AD is coming out with a new version and we get to learn about all the cool new features that are gonna be in the latest version of Altium Designer. So I'm very happy to have Michal with us here today. Thanks for joining us. Michał Topolski: Yeah, hello. Thank you. Thank you for a brief introduction. Hello to everybody. Yes, yes, as you mentioned, we are now launching briefly AD 24, which is obviously the next version, the next big version count and that's always a good moment to have new features introduced. Zach Peterson: So one of the themes I've been noticing with the new group of features has been really twofold. One is collaboration and then another is in kind of multi-disciplinary design and really I guess focusing more on product design. And you're working more in the second area. So maybe tell us which feature it is you're overseeing. Michał Topolski: Yes, thank you for this introduction. So yes, I'm working on electronic product design and part of this of it is a multi-board and the other part is harness design. And these two are very much correlated. So as I believe every electronic engineer knows, there are many elements to the electronic product and obviously, PCBs are the base of it, but then you have to have connect them somehow. So that's when the harnessing comes in. So that's wiring, cabling. We have different names and they obviously mean some other things for some people, but we generally, we call it in Altium Designer, we call it harness design. Zach Peterson:  So with a harness design, I think people might think of that as like probably two possible things. One might be like a custom cable assembly, one might be a custom connector housing or maybe an off-the-shelf housing that has custom wiring that is built into it. Maybe it's hand assembled, maybe it's factory assembled. But you probably have a bunch of wires spanning between two or more connectors. And then you need to integrate that into the project somehow. Is that correct? Michał Topolski: Yes, that's precisely it. And we support both of these ways. So you can just have a off-the-shelf cable connection and you can have it listed in BOM as a single item or you can have your own harnessing wiring drawn and have it made, have it manufactured custom. Zach Peterson: So when you say it can be part of the BOM, this could be like a mechanical element that appears in the BOM, is that correct? Michał Topolski: No, actually harness design is a separate project on its own. So it's like you have schematic and you have PCB, then you have a separate PCB project. Michał Topolski: Right? Zach Peterson:  Gotcha. Michał Topolski: And harness design in Altium Designer is a separate harness project, which means it has its own BOM. So yeah, well, technically these elements are mostly mechanical or electro-mechanical if you're concerned with some items. But they are in a different space right now. In the future, we'll connect these two spaces in probably one consolidated BOM in multipart. But that's speaking about the future. Zach Peterson: So I have to ask, and I think some other people have probably asked this question themselves, why did Altium decide to develop a harness design feature? Altium, obviously known for PCB design software, and then more recently, a lot of the cloud management tools that have really helped propel enterprises to be more productive. But harness design seems a little out of left field to me. Michał Topolski: To me, it's very complementary. So if an engineer has ever been designing a more complex design, he would notice at some point that there are electrical connections between boards and without Altium Designer, the history is quite the same. So initially, it was obviously, as you mentioned, a PCB design tool, which is very successful in this field. But then we decided that we need to grow because the modern electronic products are not just single PCBs, even very complex, like 16 layers or more, whatever. It's just so much more. So then we created multi-board and when you have this multi-board environment and you have different PCBs and models and electro-mechanical devices in that system, then obviously, you need to connect them somehow. And this is where the harness design comes in. So we've been asked by customers, okay, but I have my PCBs here and here but how do I draw my connections between them? So harness design model is a direct answer to that need and solves this problem. And yes, this is our very first approach to this area. As you mentioned, it might be a bit off in terms of PCB design that Altium's famous for but I think that when our users, and users from the outside that are willing to use Altium projects in the future, we'll see how it's implemented, how it's seamless to use. They'll notice that this is not just another harnessing tool from the electrical world because that's what our competition mostly is. Like, these tools are not tailored for the electrical engineers, electronic engineers. They're tailored for electrical work, like with the big machines and big industry and stuff like that. And in Altium, it's tailored to the needs of creating electronic products. Zach Peterson: The most recent instance where I needed to do any type of custom interconnect design to go between multiple boards was using actually a flex connection. So doing kind of like a harness design approach, but doing it on a flex ribbon so it could bend and twist and do whatever you needed it to do. So with that type of system, you're really selecting the mating connectors and then you're designing a PCB to then connect everything and then you match up the pinouts. With a harness design, you're actually using wiring. So you're not really using a PCB layout tool to draw out those interconnects. So what does that look like for the user in order to create the physical design, not just the logical design, but the actual physical design? Michał Topolski: I would say it's very similar to what we have in PCB. So there's this logical layer which is schematic in PCB and we have wiring diagram. You can draw the individual wires and connect splices to them and just route them in the proper way. But then you have the layout drawing and this is something like a PCB in PCB projects. So this is a place where you actually draw the topology. It seems very much like schematic, but it has different objects in Altium. So it uses bundles. So we can draw not just individual wires, but you can route them inside how they are bundled, how they go together. Obviously, we have objects like connection points, which are used to rout these bundles, to assign splice points to these connection points. And yeah, if you look at it, it's very obvious. I may share a sample project so I can show for a second. So this is wiring drawing, a wiring diagram where you can draw individual wires as I mentioned. Zach Peterson: Well, for those listening on audio, we're looking in the Schematic Editor right now. For those watching on YouTube, you're getting the full view, but on audio, it looks like we have a bunch of boxes drawn out that would typically represent components and then you have the wires drawn between them. So it looks a lot like a schematic and I think it's really familiar for a lot of users. Michał Topolski: Exactly, and that was our goal 'cause we're in Altium and schematic is a well-known environment, so it's very seamless to learn how to use harness design model because, essentially it looks very much the same at this point. But then we go to layout, which also kind of looks like schematic, but we can route our wires, well, actually route bundles and the wires are routed inside. So it's automatic. When the whole net is defined properly in the wiring diagram, and when the bundles are connected properly in the layout, then the wires inside are routed automatically. So then when in your BOM, you generate your wiring list from two table, which defines from which point the wire goes, and where it ends is defined automatically and generated automatically. Zach Peterson: So what we're seeing here in this layout, like you said, it looks a lot like a schematic, but we actually see pictures and graphics that show the connectors and then we see what looks like lines drawn to represent the different wiring bundles that go between each of the connectors. Michał Topolski: I just want to emphasize that these graphics, as you said, they're not just graphics, they are full 3D models of components. So we can actually generate different views in design. So you don't have to pre-prepare these images as you would do in many tools. They're not just simple graphics. They are interactive, sorry. And you can, for instance, have a wireframe view, you can look from different angles. So it's very flexible in that term. Zach Peterson: So you said there's a wireframe view. Can you describe that for us? Michał Topolski: Sure, so what you see here right now, it's a full shaded view of a component but in some cases, it's not the best one because some details might not be visible. So we would like to go into pure black and white line mole, which only limits the contours of the component, and this is it. For those who watch us, you can see that, for instance, I have just dynamically changed this shaded model to a wireframe model just like that just because as I said, this is all generated in design. It's not pre-prepared images or graphics. Zach Peterson: Yeah, I've had to draw out wiring diagrams in the past and I will admit I have had to go onto Google images and search for an image of that connector or find a image on DigiKey or something and copy it into a PowerPoint. So I think it's very convenient that you can automatically create a lot of these assets directly inside of Altium Designer. So this is all really interesting and one thing I, of course, have to ask is was this something that was in really high demand with users? Michał Topolski: It was in high demand, especially among those users that were multi-board adopters, that were using multi-board previously because they have noticed the need. And this is also an endless cycle because if we get more people that are using multi-board, they get to use harness and then the other way, they also use more of the multi-board. So that's good, that's good for us and that's also good for users because then we get more attention, which means we get more development on that and we can improve it faster. So yes, we're listening very carefully to all feedback about multi-board and harness very much these days because I think the tool is very good and we have many voices of our customers that are happy with what it is. But we also know that there's a long road ahead of us, and yes, we're trying to catch all the voices. It might take some time, just be warned but in the end, I think we're gonna make it a really seamless tool for everybody that's interested. Zach Peterson: And so this is gonna be included with all the standard multi-board design tools? This isn't like an external feature that you have to purchase or anything like that? Michał Topolski: No, but it's where we're emphasizing that. As you mentioned, this is part of multi-board. So product design suite and this is Pro and Enterprise license level. It's not standard. Unfortunately, harness design right now, it's not standard but it's Pro and Enterprise and while harness design can be used as a standalone project, so we don't need to have a multi-board project to actually have a harness project. They can be separate project, that's no big deal. But we encourage people to use multi-board project first because if you define your connectivity inside multi-board, then it goes into the harness design. So they are interconnected this way and we plan for this connection, this strict connection between these two environments to really bloom in the future. We would like to have end-to-end connectivity checks and stuff like that. So brace yourselves. I think some interesting things are coming in this environment. But coming back to licensing, I also wanted to mention that while A365 is not necessary for using harness design but to use harness-specific library components, like wires and cables, we actually need A365 because this is a cloud-enabled feature. So you can have your wires and cables inside harness design but if you want to store them in the library, you're gonna need the A365. Zach Peterson: Sure, that makes sense. So you brought up things like wiring and storage in the library. I guess that begs the question, what sort of information is needed to input into a design in order to use everything successfully? I ask that because obviously, we're talking about wiring harnesses. So you need wires. You need connector body. You probably also need something like, I don't know, crimp contacts. And maybe if it's gonna be hand assembled, there's gonna be a special tooling that's needed. What's the complete suite of information that someone would need in order to create a project and then pass the documentation off to their assembler who can then make this design into a physical object? Michał Topolski: Harness designing work is not very standardized. So I would say it very much depends on individual process of the company that is using it. I've been speaking to many customers and some of them just limit to drawing connectors but very generic. They don't even have to use models. They don't care very much about the lengths and margins, production margins about how many twister are and stuff like that. They just leave it to their manufacturers because they outsource it. And then you obviously need some lower level detail. But then some of these companies also are manufacturing samples or even small batches inside their facilities and then they need complete information because they use it directly like a flow below. So yeah, I would say it very much depends. But the basic set would be obviously to have some connectors that you would like to use. But again, if you utilize multi-board, you can define mating connectors in there and then they will be brought to wiring diagrams. So you wouldn't start from scratch. You would have them in there. Then you also have to draw wires but you don't necessarily need to have them predefined. You can always change properties and like components inside the design. So you can think of wires that you have as a generic components idea that we have in schematics. So we just place generic component, generic wire and then you can assign a component or assign properties to it, whatever you would like to do. And well, I'd say that basically that that's it 'cause then other things are purely your design. So you define splices, you define the topology and from that, you can bring these drawings to Draftsman and generate your manufacturing drawings. Zach Peterson: So as far as like what the wiring is concerned, there are some properties that you could assign as I think what you said. So that could be like wire gauge, strip length, number, you said number of twists, which which would make sense. Number of strands if it's stranded wire, those kinds of things. Michał Topolski: Yes, exactly, exactly. Color, gauge. These are very basic stuff. And one thing that maybe it's worth mentioning at this point is as I've been showing this layout, drawing, some may have noticed, this is a 2D, so two-dimensional drawing, it's flat only. And many complex harnesses are needed to be routed in 3D environment. And this is right now not possible inside Altium but we have CoDesigner feature, which has been with us for many years now and I think many Altium users are familiar of that. We right now have tests with Creo regarding current design integration, which means that you can take your wiring diagram and direct the information stream directly to MCAD, so you then get connectors, you get the connectivity, you get it from to table inside Creo and then you can route the design in 3D in there and then get back with the information, which is most crucial, which means lengths. And with these lengths, you can create your BOM and your lengths, wires and stuff like that. So this is a flow that many customers has been asking about and right now, as I said, this is Creo but we intend to also support our other environments, which CoDesigner already supports for PCBs. Zach Peterson: So that's really interesting. It sounds like someone can take the import from the harness design in terms of let's say the connections, connector bodies and what's involved in terms of wiring. The mechanical engineer can then place those, move them around to where they need to be inside an enclosure and then that information can get pushed back into the harness design. Is that the correct way to think about it? Michał Topolski: Right now, it's less about positions, especially in three-dimensional space. We don't support that yet inside harness design. It's more about the pure length because there's a difference if you route a cable or wire in between two points and you do not take into consideration how they're routed in 3D space because they might go around some elements that you have and if you don't account for that, then the wire would be just too short. You just draw it on plane surface. So this is actually the goal here right now, but there are some plans to bring the 3D model of harness design that you design in MCAD to a multi-board assembly environment. So then you have this represented inside our Altium environment and as I mentioned before, 'cause we own the connectivity that you defined in multi-board, we can also show point-to-point connections in the future obviously. So yeah, this is our goal here. Zach Peterson:  So this is interesting because I think normally, someone might use an MCAD application to try and model a wiring harness. I know that there are specialty applications that are out there that are specifically for wiring and cabling and stuff. But I think as you said, they're for larger machines, industrial settings, that kind of thing. It sounds like the real difference with an MCAD application is that the MCAD application has the ability to give the information back to the PCB designer so that they can quickly generate an entire bill of materials for every part in their system. So each of the PCBs, the cable, cable assembly, all of that. Michał Topolski: Exactly, exactly. That's the way we see it. And this is a place where actually starting harness design, not in MCAD but in Altium Designer and harness design model can be superior to just purely MCAD. Obviously, there are some components that we don't have in Altium, which would be like fasteners and some mechanical parts. And obviously, the enclosure, so it has to be designed in MCAD environment and about that, this is the way to do it. But then, I think in the end, at least this is what I've learned, there are many, many engineers that would like to own this information inside Altium and generate, as you mentioned, this unified documentation from Altium Designer. Zach Peterson: So if you were starting in the MCAD side and then going into defining the constraints for the PCB, essentially the MCAD user would have an opportunity to possibly select some of those connectors on the front end and then just pass that information onto the designer, rather than having the designer receive the board and the enclosure information and then try to fit connectors within that. Then it has to get passed back again to get verified. And so you eliminate some of that back and forth if the MCAD user could start first. Would you agree? Michał Topolski: Yes, yes, that's perfectly the goal. I think it's not yet supported exactly the way you described it. This is the ultimate goal. Right now, we usually start with the information from harness design, but I think it's like a new feature if we do that 'cause right now, we're very much focusing on the integrity of the data, so there is no corruption happening. That's the most crucial for us. And all these improvements, like starting in MCAD, defining connectors there, other parts, obviously, it's coming as well. Zach Peterson:  Okay, but at at least someone could start an MCAD and at least have kind of a paper doll model and then say these are your three connectors, copy and paste into a Slack chat or something and then the designer can just take that, put it in their BOM and then they're off and running. So I think you mentioned two other tools within Altium Designer where there's an integration with harness design that was Draftsman and then exporting to the BOM, is that correct? Michał Topolski: Harness design is a standard BOM, as you know from PCB projects, and standard Draftsman, as you know, from PCB projects. And I think this is the only way to do it actually in Altium. So they have this unified environment. This is our goal. This is still one Altium design. There is no separate harness design software. It's part of our suite. So it's only only natural for us to utilize the same environments. And I think it's very, very useful. I've heard these kind of voices that having wiring diagram and layout drawing in the same drawing, in the end, is something that not many tools in the market can do and can be beneficial. And also our active BOM and our connection to the Octopart and having lifecycle statuses and all that, that's also very, very useful to engineers to not design something that will be obsolete in a month or so. That would be very bad. Zach Peterson:  So inside of Draftsman, for example, since this is all its own project, essentially, you're just placing the region where you want the wiring harness drawing to appear in Draftsman, right click, import and then bam, your drawing appears there. Michał Topolski: And when you make changes to one of these drawings, wiring or layout, you just have to again click the magic import button and it updates. That's it. That's all we need. Zach Peterson: Very cool. Very cool. So I think we have time for one more question, which is really about the user reaction. I know that earlier I asked you if it was in high demand and now that it's been in beta for a little bit, I have to ask, what's been the user reaction? What are people saying, positive or negative? Michał Topolski: Yes, thank you very much for this question. User reaction was largely positive, very positive. And I want to emphasize that when we launched into open beta in January, that was after a few months of development with some very, very engaged customers that were helping us to get through the MVP process. So when we launched, well, it was a newborn obviously. But I think the dynamics of the team that is developing the tool and all the people that are involved in the process, especially customers and everyone that's helping is really helping us to learn this baby to walk very fast and then ride a bike very soon also. So the reactions are very positive and this dynamic is also very visible to people. I've heard reactions like, "Oh, we have not seen this tool for three months 'cause we're exploring and now we're exploring again 'cause we have a project that we need harness for and it's a different tool now. It's so much better." So yeah, that's like genuinely the reaction I've had and I hope that this will persist in future. So that's the message to everyone that has been exploring Altium harness design in January this year and has dropped it since. And please, try again. If not now, then in January in '24 when the tool will to go out of open beta. You'll notice that the tool has changed a lot. It has become much more stable and there are many features that were missing, the big ones, but also the small ones, you know, the quality of life improvements, all that. I think it's very important. Especially in last months, we were very focused on improving all these tiny little things that are very useful in everyday life of every engineer. So just to reduce the count of clicks and all these things that make us bored and nervous at some point. So yes, and I also would like to encourage everyone that has touched the tool, but not only harness design, I mean about Altium Designer to go to forum if you have not done it and express your voice because this feedback really matters. We would like to hear that. I am one of the people that would like to hear it, we listen to it. And then we react to these voices when creating the tools for you. Zach Peterson:  Yeah, we'll include a link to the forum in the show notes. So final question before we let you go. You alluded to some potential improvements on the workflow, like starting from MCAD, going back to PCB. Are there any other interesting nuances or feature upgrades or improvements to this tool that are on the horizon that you can reveal? Or are people just gonna have to subscribe to the channel if they wanna learn more? Michał Topolski: I'll just generally say that we seek for improvements, some big improvements in the management of components, how they are linked in between and there are also some improvements coming in terms of how you can define models inside multi-board. But I don't want to go into details right now 'cause as you know, deadlines are dangerous. I should not be showing any details about these. So just please stay tuned and if you are interested in some very particular features that you would like to see or have heard about from somebody, then just please contact us directly and we'll have a chat. Zach Peterson:  Sounds great, and I guess as all of this rolls out and slowly improves over time, we'd love to have you back to talk about this more. Michał Topolski: Thank you very much. Zach Peterson: Thank you very much. To everyone that's been listening on audio or watching on YouTube, We've been talking with Michal Topolski, product manager at Altium who is overseeing the harness design rollout. If you are watching on YouTube, make sure to hit the Subscribe button, hit the Like button. You'll be able to keep up with all of our tutorials and feature announcements as they become available. And last but not least, don't stop learning, stay OnTrack and we will see you next time. Thanks, everybody.

Explore the transformative world of 3D MID design in the OnTrack Podcast as Altium's Jack Henriques and Harting's Michael Mross discuss Altium's cutting-edge 3D routing tool. Gain insights into the vast potential of molded interconnect devices (MIDs) across industries and stay updated on the future of PCB design.

Andrew, Matt, and Claude chat economic indicators, retail and the lipstick effect (Lovisa, Step One, Baby Bunting), Altium's AGM, Vysarn, takeover activity (Namoi Cotton, Adore Beauty, & Ensurance). As well as Diverger, and the latest results from Playside and Smartpay.  Follow us on Twitter: @BabyGiantsPodSubscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSXgHHJ4XjWK-r1k4O0pj1g-----0:34 - Good News4:52 - Economic Indicators6:05 - Retail11:39 - Collins Foods (ASX: CKF)13:11 - Domino's Pizza Enterprises (ASX: DMP)13:22 - Lovisa Holdings (ASX: LOV) & The Lipstick Effect17:58 - Step One Clothing (ASX:STP)19:52 - Baby Bunting Group (ASX: BBN)20:33 - Temu24:56 - Altium (ASX: ALU) AGM26:14 - Vysarn (ASX: VYS)28:30 - Catapult Group International (ASX:CAT)29:48 - Takeover Activity - Namoi Cotton (ASX: NAM), Adore Beauty (ASX: ABY), & Ensurance (ASX:ENA)31:39 - Bargain territory?36:48 - Diverger (ASX: DVR)38:33 - Playside Studios (ASX: PLY)42:43 - Smartpay Holdings (ASX: SMP)50:01 - PWR Holdings (ASX:PWH)

Mary Barra, GM CEO, discusses the company's announcement of its biggest-ever buyback plan, and says she expects 'strong adoption' of more affordable EVs. Thierry Wizman, Macquarie Global Interest Rates & Currencies Strategist, says the biggest risk right now is another sudden shock in the oil market. Scott Nuttall, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Co-CEO, discusses his firm's acquisition of insurer Global Atlantic. Lara Rhame, FS Investments Chief US Economist, says the state of services in the economy could threaten the Fed's 2% inflation goal. Howard Marks, Oaktree Capital Co-Chairman & Co-Founder, reflects on the legendary life and career of Berkshire Hathaway's Charlie Munger. David Rubenstein, Carlyle Group Co-Founder, previews brand-new episodes of Bloomberg's "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations" featuring AIG CEO Peter Zaffino and Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman. Get the Bloomberg Surveillance newsletter, delivered every weekday. 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Transcript: This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Tom Keene, along with Jonathan Ferrell and Lisa Abramowitz. Join us each day for insight from the best an economics, geopolitics, finance and investment. Subscribe to Bloomberg Surveillance on demand on Apple, Spotify and anywhere you get your podcasts, and always on Bloomberg dot Com, the Bloomberg Terminal, and the Bloomberg Business app. John Ferrell with Mary Burrow, I want to go through some of the numbers for our audience. Divid end up thirty three percent, biggest ever buyback plan ten billion dollars, forty billion dollar name yesterday. Just some context perspective there that is massive inquiring minds. Mary will want to know why have you decided to deliver a ten billion dollar buy back shortly after you've signed a labor contract that adds nine point three billion to expenses over its term. Well, as we looked at what was happening from a labor perspective, we had built and really the labor environment going into our negotiations, we had put conservative estimates into our plan. So although it was a little higher than what we expected, we believe that we have and our guidance for next year, we've already said that we'll be able to offset that completely with the plan that we already had of a two billion dollar cost out perspective. So we did the right thing to recognize our manufacturing team members who have done a great job and continue to build vehicles safely with high quality. And we also thought that we've got to look and make sure that we're balanced across all of our stakeholders, and our owners are very important. So we think this was a very balanced response when we look at what was done from a labor perspective and what we're doing as part of our capital allocation framework for our owners. Well, let's get into that. So shareholders are super happy. The name is up by almost eleven percent so far this morning. I wonder if you aw Wiz Mary, they didn't get the forty percent they wanted. They got twenty five plus cost of living adjustments and other things as well. Is the old things of this morning not something that concerns you. When I look at it, I think it's balanced. Again, we have very well compensated and you know, when you look at the suite of benefits that our represented team members have it's a very very appropriate package and frankly leading from an industry perspective broader than just the auto industry. So I think we did the right thing to recognize and reward the hard work of our manufacturing team members across the board. But also one of the things our manufacturing team members very much value is job security. And to have job security, you have to have a strong company and you have to look at all of your stakeholders. So what we did from a share buyback perspective for our owners is I think a very balanced response. As you know, this move this morning not just about the capital return program, also about cost cuts. We know you're looking to fully offset that labor contract the additional costs from it. Have you identified where you will cut where you need to cut? Yes, a lot of this was already underway. At the beginning of this year calendar year twenty twenty three, we announced it too, billion dollar cost reduction structural cost reduction between twenty three and the end of twenty four. That's well underway. As I said, we also comprehended that we would have increases in our labor cost as we looked at what the environment was and also wanting to reward our manufacturing employees. So you know there's work going across many aspects of the business and including making our products more efficient while still having the features, the functionality and beautiful designs that our customers want. So there's been a concentrated effort at the company to lower our fixed costs while enabling wonderful products and rewarding the team that is helping us deliver them. Clearly, these are additional costs. Are they forcing a change in execution or a change in strategy? Definitely not a change in strategy. Our strategy is clear. It's really based on four pillars of executing our strong internal combustion engine program vehicles, and we see we're performing very well in the market and we see that we're below the average incentives. I think that speaks to the strength of our internal combustion engine products. From an EVY perspective, we have confidence in the portfolio we have. We're a bit disappointed this year that we were constrained by the automation to build modules. So this is not something that is fundamentally an issue with Altium. It was more manufacturing automation issue that we're working and we'll be out of it by middle of next year and making improvement every quarter from that perspective. Also software and this year. Earlier this year, Mike Abbott joined our team who brings tremendous software expertise and he's built a very strong team that we'll share more about when we get to our investor day in March of next year. And then autonomy and when you look at autonomous vehicles and the importance of this technology and the talent that we have at Cruise. We are doing an independent review from an incident perspective but also overall from a safety perspective, and that will guide our path forward there. But we have a very capable team there. So the four pillars of our strategy have not changed at all. What has changed is our tactics, and our tactics are changing because of the world is changing. We never thought that the EV adoption would necessarily be a straight line. We've seen this in other markets, we're seeing it now in the US. But I think the thing that everybody has to remember, if the growth is slowing, it is still growing. And we think as we get more of the EV products we have this year into next, we think we're going to see is strong adoption for our products, and as the charging infrastructure continues to be more robust, we think that's going to drive adoption as well as having affordable evs. And that's where when you look at the Chevrolet Equinox as well as the Blazer and the Bolt that's coming, we're going to be having products in that range of affordable vehicles. That is going to be very important from EV adoption. Two things to unpack there. One is robot taxis. The other is EV. So let's deal with robot taxis. First, your counting expenses on crews substantially, just how committed are you there? I remember only a number of years ago we were talking about bringing in fifty billion in revenue by twenty thirty, and I get it. Married We'll understand that new tech is tough to develop, its to deploy. I think we're seeing that across a range of issues. But when do you know if it's the right time just to walk away from this well, I think the first of all, when you look at the progress that the Cruise team has made over the eight last eight years when General Motors acquired crews, I think it's substantial and we've already demonstrated that the cruise vehicle can perform at a level that's safer than a human driver. Let's not forget over forty thousand people on average lose their lives in traffic accidents in the US alone, and ninety percent of them are caused by human error. What we have learned with this incident is it's got to be significantly better than a human driver to drive adoption, and we have to do a much better job of working with the regulators. That's something that GM has a long reputation of working and being transparent with regulators at the local, state, and federal level. So I think as we do that and get the results of the independent review we're doing, that will guide us on our path forward. From an AV perspective, I'm always interested in how we know when we're wrong an exit size I think everyone has to go through, including myself married. But on this topic of EV's the slow down, what's behind it and why aren't we just learning that American consumers just don't want these cars? Well, I don't think it's that American consumers just don't want these cars. I think there still is limited availability when you look at the choice that customers had today, from an internal combustion vehicle perspective, I think a lot of the evs that are out right now are more expensive. You've got to look at where the sweet spot of the market is, and when you really want to win an EV's you've got to make sure that you are meeting the customer who only owns one vehicle. That's the bulk of people who buy vehicles today, new vehicles. They only own one vehicle or if they have two in their family. They're needed every day to earning their livelihoods. So we've got to get affordable. There's got to be a robust charging infrastructure. So again, the growth hasn't gone in reverse. It's slowing. I think we never expected. We thought it would be have some bumps along the way. I think that's what we're seeing right now. But I think when we have evs that are affordable, when people realize how much fun they are to drive and the performance and they're not giving anything up, and then that all important charging infrastructure, I think you know we're going to see them start to grow at a more rapid break again. And that's something that we'll continue to watch. And that's why we've changed some of our tactics to be responsive to where the customer is. You've been super generous with your time. Marriage. Just want to fit in one further question. Right now, you're a forty three billion dollar name. It's a big move this morning by ten percent. The forward multiple we're talking about four times expected earnings a little more than that after today's move. The stock has been dead money for the best part of a decade. You've been doing this a long time. I know you're super close with investors. What is it that you think is in this plan, this strategy that you have and a strategy that you've suggested this morning hasn't changed that's going to turn this around. Well, I think demonstrating our commitment to all of our stakeholders and the I think when you look at a ten billion dollar accelerated buyback program, it should signal because it means we have confidence in the cash generation ability of this company. We have confidence in our strategy across the four pillars that I covered. Yes, we had some challenges that this year with our ultim based evs that I think gabe investors some concern, But we're demonstrating the confidence that we and the board have that we're executing the strategy, and we're going to see growth, strong cash flow and strong margins. That's what we're going to deliver. That's captured in today's move nine percent. Mary, appreciate your time ready tell you thanks for catching up with us, Mary Parda of GM too. Wiseman joins us right now. Global Efects interest rate strategist much more than that at Macquarie, with lots and lots of experience on this. I love the first sentence of your note. Don't believe the hype You've been skeptical. Are you combining and dovetailing in with your low rate call a true slowdown in the economy? Yes? Absolutely. I think the narrative these days from Wall Street that I've seen in the last few weeks is that the reason the ten year field has been coming down is because we're in a disinflationary phase here in the economy, and there's going to be more disinflation to come in the US. I agree with that we are going to see disinflation in the US. It's going to come in rants, it's going to come in those eras of the CPI that are linked to consumer discretionary spending. But let's Also keep in mind one of the reasons we're going to see this disinflation is because the consumer is slowing. And there you have the don't believe the hype story, right, I don't believe the story is about record breaking Black Thursdays, by Friday sales and Cyber Monday sales. I think what I think these sales were on the back of heavy discounting. If you look at what some of these corporate execs had said prior to the start of the holiday spending season, they talked about having to cut prices. We'll all Marty even talked about deflation. So this is this is about disinflation. But let's keep in mind where this this inflation is going to come from. It's going to come from a weakening and pricing power at the consumer product and services level. It's going to be driven by slow down in agurate demand in the US. Also about how they're pank for this stuff Binapailita. You look at some of the numbers just booming. What do you take away from that? So my takeaway is from a macroeconomic perspective, what it does is it shifts spending to the early part of the season because normally you would have to save up a few more shekels as you approach your deadline on December twenty fifth to get those purchases done with by now, pay later. You don't need to do that, so it allows you to spend earlier, especially if you don't have access to revolving credit or credit cards. So I think that's another reason why we might have seen the so called record breaking days on last Friday and Monday. But again, if that's if it's the case that spending was only pulled forward, it doesn't mean that in aggregate for the whole of the season we're going to get that much that much hype. So far, people have viewed weaker US data as a positive. It's both been for a bond rally and a stock rally, And you're saying that we could see that bond rally continue quite significantly going forward. Will there be a diversion so in terms of risk asseesis or have to be to fuel a bond rally that goes much deeper than where we are now. Absolutely, to let the bond rally extend to say where the ten yure yield gets the three percent, I do think it has to be associated with a sell off at risk assets. I don't think you know, to get that kind of forceful move early in the bond market, you need to have some sort of dislocation in risk ASTs, some sort of drop in stocks, but over time, not necessarily. I think we can see a situation where, if this inflation continues slowly, you get the bond deal going down to where it was, let's say in the spring. Three and a half percent is not inconceivable without a stock market drop as long as it happens slowly and steadily. But well, corporations adapt. If I go back to bear Stearns, where you're held court, you had an entire security analysis team looking at these slowdowns, I don't buy the gloom. And the corporations, like General Motors, will adapt. I'm not sure what they're going to adapt to. Technological progress and changes. They can adapt to. Government policies that spur more investment in electric vehicles and clean energy technologies they can adapt to. But what do you do when you have excess inventory as the auto dealers do? Now? What do you do when the banks and the finance companies are cutting off credit to auto buyers? What do you do? Then you're not in control of that situation. You're in control of what's happening on your factory floor, You're in control of promotions, and maybe the way you adapt is by cutting prices. Let's face it, that's a way of adapting to to hold on to market share in the face of excess inventories, in the face of consumers slowing their demand. So yeah, they can adapt, but it's not necessarily in a way that is going to make their stock prices shoot up. You've identified a series of places in this economy where we could see lower prices retail, Walmart, talked about the auto makers, We're talking about GM, maybe lower prices, going to see that come through the pipeline soon. What's the biggest threat that still lingers for you? The biggest threat to that view that this disinflation continue through next year, it's supply shocks. I think the lesson of twenty twenty twenty two and early twenty twenty three was that we cannot control what happens in the rest of the world, especially as it pertains to the supply of oil, the supply of natural gas. So from my perspective, if we get another shock in that market, and by the way, it doesn't have to be because of a war, although in the past two years that has been the case. It could be simply that OPEC plus decides to curtail supply and we get a brand going back up to the low nineties as a result of that. Again, it's a question of how much they curtail supply by, but that's the biggest risk right now. The good news is that gasoline prices in the US have been falling for six weeks straight, I think, and steadily. I think that's going to show up in the CPI by the time we rolled around to seeing the November numbers and the December numbers. But the real reason that the CPI is going to still see disinflation is because rents rents in the new tenant market and the new lease market are coming down. That's going to put a lot of pressu ultimately on the yellows as measures of rents of primary residences. We're going to get that disinflation over the next few months. This is exactly what nil Data of Renaisance Macro is talking about tom the disinflation that's in the pipeline for rents for used cars, which is why based on what Walla said yesterday, it's not that much of an if for the likes of Terry, for the likes of Nil Duta, which is why they think you're going to get this conversation early next year about which you said interest rates. Yeah, there's no question there's a school of thought out there that this is not if. It's just simply when in the path to it. But I would dovetail it back to the labor economy, which we've barely touched on today, and we've got claims coming up here Thursday. And then you mentioned the late jobs report for November. I believe it's December eighth. But the basic idea here, John is when does a labor economy finally go? If you get a labor economy to go, you get there instantly. Claims two O nine, keep going back to two nine claims to eighty one economy in so many different ways over the last eighteen months or so. Terry, it's going to see it, Terry wi there at Macquarie longer going far away. There was KKR nineteen seventy six with history made in a style and a method. At KKR it was original. Shanale Basset gets an update from their co CEO Shanale, Good morning, Thank you, Tom. I'm standing by with the co CEO of KKR, Scott not All, and it is a really big day for KKR because they are doing this. They're buying the rest of Global Atlantic, a big insurance company that they don't already own. That is an all cash, two point seven billion dollar deal. But you're also creating a new unit at KKR that houses a core private equity business. If you had to give the market one way to understand what you're trying to do over there, what is it? First of all, Shanali, great to be with you, Thanks for having me. Really, what we're trying to do today is lay out the big three growth engines we have as a firm. So you're right, we are buying the minority stake in Global Atlantic we don't already own. We already owned sixty three percent of the companies, so we're buying the other thirty seven percent. Global Atlantic has been a great partnership for us. This is a transaction we did in twenty twenty one. The company is more than doubled since we announced the original deal in July of twenty twenty and it's been highly recurring a lot of growth earnings for KKR, so that's part one. We are also modifying our compensation ratios so our asset management business continues to scale. Our run rate management fees have doubled over the last three years. So the second thing we're doing is reducing the compensation ratioon fees, making an offsetting increase on kerry, and that will allow us to create more fee related earnings for our shareholder. You're changing the way you pay people, in effect, not the aggregate amount of compensation, but we're providing more of the fee related earnings to our shareholders, a little bit more carry to our people. The net of that is about neutral, but it will mean more of few related earnings overall. And then the third thing we're doing to your point, and this is relatively new for us, is we're creating a new segment for the firm. So we've historically reported as asset management and insurance. We are adding a new segment called Strategic Holdings. And what we will include in there are the dividends that we're receiving and will begin to receive in greater magnitude from our core private equity portfolio, which is a portfolio of great diversified recession resistant companies that we've been building up over the last several years. KKR, Apollo, Brookfield, they're all buying insurance companies. All of you are diversifying in pretty meaningful ways if you think about it. It's made private equity, by the dollars, by the assets under management, a smaller part of all of your businesses. What does this mean for the future of private equity? Private equity is still a growth business for us. We expect to continue to grow that part of KKR for a long time, both with respect to the flagship strategies, but also we've created a number of different growth strategies. The core private equity business is part of private equity that's now a thirty billion dollar franchise for us. So this isn't about an ore. This is about an and we see an ability to grow PE and all the other parts of KKR, and we've diversified meaningfully over the course of the last ten to fifteen years. We're just continuing our way down that path. Now, what does Global Atlantic exactly do. It seems like what it's really doing is giving you a whole balance sheet to be using to compete on you've mentioned capital markets is one place there's been a lot of competition from your industry to the banks. How does this help you now compete in a bigger way? Sure, Global Atlantic, as you know, it's largely issued annuities to individuals, and so if you think about what we do at KKRE, we work for pensioners, retirement retirees all around the world now family offices and individual investors as well. Global Atlantic distributes its products to that same kind of an audience. So historically we've worked for tens of millions of retirees. We still do, but now they're just in the form of policyholders. And that's our mission at KKR is to actually do a great job for all those people that we work for. We're not confused about who our bosses are. And so to the second part of your question on capital markets, what Global Atlantic allows us to do is create more synergy. We didn't necessarily see all this three years ago when we started our way down this path, but we think there's even more we can do to unlock value between the two companies, and capital markets is just one of those examples. Capital markets means you might be appearing on more and more deals lending a balance sheet to provide capital for big buyouts and other leverage loan deals. That's right, and we're already in that business. So the way that we built our capital markets business is by partnering with a Street, So we'll be alongside of the traditional banks and investment banks as we built that business. But what Global Atlantic brings us is an ability to expand the vision for that franchise. So there's more to do across asset based finance. As an example, more, when Global Atlantic does their large institutional block transactions, we can put some of the Global Atlantic balance sheet. GA has its own sidecard third party capital funds called IVY, so some can go into those third party funds, and then we can syndicate the excess through our capital markets forranchise as well. Just like we do private equity and infrastructure transactions, it applies to insurance deals as well. Something interesting about these deals is that you already have told investors this morning that this will add twenty percent to total operating earnings. You're boosting your targets into twenty twenty six for few related earnings. What are the real financial impacts? What can stockholders feel for KKR over the next two three years, well, I think what they'll be able to see is we are going to grow all three of our recurring forms of earnings in a much more meaningful way going forward, So a few related earnings will be higher. We continue to see a lot of organic growth in our businesses. Just by changing our compensation ratios, you get accretion on few related earnings, and we think by virtue of what we're renouncing today, we can do even more. With the Global Atlantic where we invest that portfolio, it's already gone from seventy two billion of AUM when we announced the transaction to one hundred and fifty eight billion over the last few years. We think we can do even more together. But they'll also see more insurance operating earnings, which we believe are highly recurring and fast growing. And then we'll have this third element, which will be the core private equity dividends showing up in the strategic holding segment. If you put those three things together, we think that'll be seventy percent or more of our overall pre tax income is those three forms of recurring earnings, and we're going to introduce them a new metric around that called operating earnings and we'll talk about that later today with our shareholders. Scott, we do have to leave it there. Thank you for joining us on a big day over at KKR. Tom shout on the basic Thank you so much with a gentleman from KKR in the future of what they do, joining us now, Lawyer. I'm chief US economist at FS Investments. On an eight point nine percent nominal GDP America, Laurie, what's so great about your economics is you've got it from the litmus paper of the FX market. How alone is the United States with an eight point nine percent nominal GDP. When Rishie Sonak is telling Francy Qua he's worried about austerity, I think we are still the growth continued to just surprise to the upside, and to me, it's remarkable the inconsistency between talking about rake cuts to you know, this idea that we're going to need rake cuts in the near term to support the economy, or the short term idea that we've seen the labor market slow. And really we do feel like we're an economy and the data would show that we're an economy firing on all cylinders. Government, business bending, consumption the only keys that's not really adding to it as residential construction. I would say that we are the standalone leader on growth. And what's so important here, Lisa, A nominal GDP topline, that's real GDP posts inflation is there's an assumption here by the Bill Ackmans of the world economists and not that it's going to plunge down to what six percent, five percent? Even that's a boom economy. And when you say it, they're talking the inflation component. And Laura, that's what I want you to weigh in on. How much does it matter if we see a slow down do we need to slow down if we continue to see the pace of disinflation that we've seen so far this year. I think there's two pieces to that argument. To me, the real and one place from probably off consensus is I am really reticent to think that we are going to get this magical slow down in inflation back to that two percent lane that we have had. On the good side, we have a lot of indications that just from some slower demand and from some of these resolutions and inventory that we're going to see lower goods prices. But I think we are really ignoring the big elephant in the room, which is services. We still have a hot labor market by my measure, we still have wage pressure that is way higher than prior to the pandemic, and the resting heart rate of inflation is still well above two percent. And on the services side really is the problem here. So I think we need to be careful about being very complacent about inflation coming down, and that really feeds into this non recessionary rate decline Goldilocks complacency that has taken hold of equity markets at this moment. In some ways, the Fed's wall are really kind of fed into that yesterday, which is a reason why maybe he gave Steams some of these market movements. He said, there is just no reason to say you would keep rates really high and inflation is back at target, how high is the threshold then to cut rates. If we do see the disinflation in the pipeline significant, it might not be long lasting because of some of these other issues, but we do see year over year comps come in with autoprice disinflation or outright deflation with rents coming in, with the fact that goods, as Walmart said, just prices are actually going down outright. I think the FED is good at looking around the corner on especially this rent issue. There's no doubt that rent is a very lagging indicator, but it's sticky for a reason. And all of the short term indicators that you know, six months ago were really pointing to rents coming down fast have now reversed. And I think something that's very important to me is the fact that rents are far below the cost that it is to buy a home per square foot. You are costing you a lot less to rent, and landlords are rational. They're going to see this, and they are going to over the next several quarters, you know, push rents higher again. So it's something that you just can't ignore in the core, even if you get the headline hitting two percent. I get nervous when the FED tries to micro manage the inflation process, Laura, and this with your overarching philosophy of summing all this together, are we beyond the pandemic? It sure doesn't feel like it to me. It feels like the stimulus is still pop and popping, popping. But from where you sit, are we beyond COVID Not? In the data, Tom, I think we're seeing this trampoline effect and the Q three GDP numbers are great example of that, and we had a big inventory, you know, push higher. We could very well get that. Still detracting from the fourth quarter, you're still getting some of these big swings in factors that are disguising what's going on underneath with demand which is still really red hot. So this is a big to me, you know, piece that we're looking at. For twenty twenty four, we start to see some move away from reliance on savings towards income. I think the irony is it could be a period of lower growth next year, but actually better sentiment about household economics as you see income finally catch up to the prior year and a half of inflation. Okay, I'm gonna pinion down it. Give me some twenty twenty four lower outlook numbers, real GDP. What do you think? Real GDP one point four and I think the tenure stays pretty high. I'm putting it at four percent for twenty twenty four. I mean, these are Lisa, these are huge slow down numbers. And then the question comes over immediately, what does non farm payrolls do? David Kelly, a JP Morgan would say goes negative well and This is really the ultimate question, Laura, do we get that kind of slow growth but high yield along with a full, fully employed America, along with job creation that continue to chugle all. I think that we look at the recessions that we've had in the two thousands, twy tens, even the nineteen nineties, we saw very little. If you look at nineteen ninety two thousand recessions, we saw very little drop and output, but a massive decline in labor in this I think upcoming year we're going to see a slower economy, but I think that companies continue to view labor as a scarce resource. I think the true Goldilocks is not going to be defined by output. It's going to be defined by the labor market, and we are going to see the I think the unemployment rates stay quite low. Lar. Thank you. We FS investment slower rhyme this morning there were a one point four percent called slower economy year. Howard Marks, chairman of oak Tree Capital Management, and I must point out author of not one, two, but three important books on investing of What to Do and just as importantly Howard What Not to Do. Howard on Charlie Munger getting the odds on your side. How did Charlie Munger get the odds on his side? He started off with a brilliant mind and a brilliant partner. He intensively studied the financials, thinking about the long term. He never tried to guess what a company or a stock would do in the short term. And he held for many years. You know, he was a great practitioner. Sit on your hands, and he did it flawlessly in the modern day, in the modern media, I remember reading those annual reports. How are years ago there was no financial media, there was no blogging internet. The short termism we're living it now. What is the lesson of Charlie Munger's long termism? Well, if you want to hit the long ball, you have to be very patient, and you know, when the stock moves up the first twenty percent, you can't start taking profits. Charlie and Warren have held things for decades. And the other thing is they were and Charlie always talked about this, you have very few moonshots. Charlie said within the last year that most of his wealth came from four decisions. And so you know what would have happened if he would have started trimming those four decisions early he certainly would not have accomplished what he did, and I think Warren would the same thing. Maybe the number four would be a little different with Warren, but you know, you know, Warren's famous for having said, put all your eggs in one basket. And I watched the basket really closely, and I think that it wasn't one basket. But the idea of concentration and patience coupled with good decisions makes for a great success. You know, a concentration and patience don't accomplish anything if you can't make above average investment decisions. But putting it all together is the formula for success. Howard, you wrote in some of your thoughts about Charlie Mungerth that he had very definite opinions, in particular regarding the investment management industry. He viewed the industry with considerable skepticism, and while a member of it, I found myself in agreement with him more often than not. What exactly are you talking about in particular? You know, I think both Charlie and Warren felt that our industry, relatively few members of it made substantial contributions to their clients wealth. Many more members that were well paid. He was always one who questions incentives. He says, you give me incentive, an incentive, I'll tell you the behavior. And and I think that, you know, I think that Warren and Charlie, if you're their operation, they, in fact Warren's ed and quotes, not a partnership, not a corporation of partnership. And they considered there there the people they manage money for their shareholders to be their partners. And they considered themselves to be working for their partners and not themselves, and their own wealth and success was a byproduct of working of doing great work for the partners. So you know, I like to put my sameself in the same boat. Those sentiments appeal to me greatly, and I've tried to follow that. How difficult has it been to sort of to adapt the strategy to different eras When you had conversations with Charlie Munger, there are questions around tech and how that changed the investment thesis. How did they think about the changing concept of what a wonderful company looked like and what fair value was. You know, you, on the one hand, you have to evolve with the times. On the other hand, you know they never went a full bore into the tech sector. You know, their famous are having made a lot of money with Apple, but you know, most tech the way they said it, they put it on the too hard pile. And if you have if you understand that your success will come from a small number of holdings, that means you don't need twenty thirty thirtyfty sixty. You don't need to exploit all the sceptors. You just have to find a few great ones. Of course, on the other hand, you know Tom said that we're you know, we're in a new era with all the communications we have. Part of what that means is that the world is a more interconnected, intelligent place. You know, back fifty years ago we used to be able to exploit things nobody else knew. Today there's very little information that doesn't make its waste speedily around the world. Howard to help us with one final question here to the management the future management of Berkshire Hathaway. They have a from COVID buildup of cash a four hundred and twelve billion out to half a trillion dollars five hundred and twenty five trillion. You and everybody else out there is living with explosive money market fund growth. You know the story in that forward here for Berkshire, Hathaway, what's the best use of there in our mounds of cash? You know, the people who run Berkshire today and will run it tomorrow understand the limitations of size. All things being equal, size makes it harder to outperform. They have the best probability of outperforming of any company their size, but their size will matter. And you know one of my professors at University of Chicago. I asked him afterwards, how would you manage a big fund? He'd say, I would index the cord and manage the hell out of the periphery. And I would imagine that at their size, they'll have to move in the direction of something like that, although they will not give up on outperformance. Howard Marx, thank you with oak Tree Capital Management. In remembrance of Charlie. I'm so pleased that we get to speak with Tipenstein, co founder and co chair of Carlisle Group, host of Peer to Peer Conversations on Bloomberg Television, because David is somebody who talks with all the executives across Wall Street, Main Street and beyond to understand how they're dealing with some of these transformative technologies of the moment, and David, I want to start there kind of where the similarities are in how some of these executives are thinking about the developments and artificial intelligence in a generative AI. Well, everybody wants to be an expert on AI and figure out how it's going to affect their company positively or negatively, but honestly, nobody really knows for sure yet how it will work. We're really inning one of artificial intelligence in terms of how major companies are going to use it or have it used against them. So everybody's trying to hire artificial experts or get people into their firm who can help them assess whether artificial intelligence is going to be useful to them or helpful to them, And nobody really knows yet, So I can't say anybody is certain how it's going to impact their business yet. David, mister Zevino stealed Marsh mcclennan and others, and then Nannie goes to AIG where different than other executives, he has to deal with disaster. What did you learn about how he handles the unexpected? Well, insurance is about dealing with the unexpected, really, and so AIG became the largest insurance company in the world for many, many years, and as a result of that, it had enormous tentacles throughout the entire financial complex. It clearly extended itself too much, didn't anticipate problems that arose, particularly in the mortgage area, and as a result had to be bailed out by the US government to tune of about one hundred and eighty billion dollars. Now that money's been paid back with interest. But AIG is no longer the biggest insurance company in the world, and it doesn't have quite the tentacles around the world that it once did, but still a very profitable company. David and Newsmaker yesterday. This is what Rubinstein does. He's steering the thunder from journalist David Rubinstein with Bill Ackman yesterday and the track that this nation will take. What did you learn from mister Rackman, David Rwinstein. Well, Bill is a very impressive person who obviously is outspoken, has been outspoken on many issues over many years. Recently has become quite visible in what he's been saying about Harvard. But he said in the interview which will air not too long from now that he's made a new bet. He's made a number of macro bets that have turned out to be extremely positive. One of them, he made it over one hundred times his money on a bet that he made a number of years ago in the time of COVID. Now he's made a bet that interest rates will be cut sooner by the Fed than is otherwise expected. And if that bet is successful, I guess he'll make a fair amount of money. But that's the big issue that many people are grappling with. Will the Fed decide and it needs to lower interest rates before the political season starts, let's say, in the summer or the fall of next year. Dave, excuse me, go ahead, Lisa, please my fault. David, is it surprising to you that a big hedge fund is focused on making big bets on treasuries right now? Well, many hedge funds people are doing that. Honestly, he has not done the so called treasury trade that others have done, where he's buying treasuries and shorting treasury futures. He hasn't done that. This is basically a bet that the Fed will succumb to some pressure to lower interest rates before too long. Now, the conventional wisdom in Wall Street is that the Fed will lower interest rates at some point during their first or second quarter, more likely the second quarter. I think his bet is it'll probably do it sooner than the conventional wisdom. And I have said publicly before, and I still think it's the case that the Fed will get in trouble if it lowers interest rates around the political season, because the Republicans will say, well, you're helping Joe Biden by lowering interest rates if you do so over the summer or in the early fall. So the Fed is going to lower interest rates, probably to avoid political criticism. It don't have to do it sooner than later. David, you mentioned mister Ackman in Harvard in the Horror of the Eastern Mediterrane. I want to go to your Duke University where they have a bridge. Folks. There's an old bridge called the Free Expression Bridge. And to make a long story short, they had to paint over a pro Palestinian tone as well. David, I want you to talk to the great and good right now about how those of means and success should deal with their shock at our American universities. Well, the American university system is still the envy of the world, and our private universities are really the places that people from all over the world want to attend. There's been a shock that many people didn't realize how strong the anti Israel feeling has been in some campuses, and the result of that has been outraged by some alums. Some universities have handled this better than other universities. I am the chairman of the board of the University of Chicago, and we have a tradition of not issuing statements on political matters or outside matters, and we have an issue one in this case. But in many cases other universities have not had that policy, and they've got in trouble for issuing statements that don't please one side or the other. It's a difficult way to walk his fine line, and I don't know that anybody has figured it out properly or correctly. David All glorious day for Bloomberg Surveillance with Doug cass and Howard Marks with us and membrance of Charlie Munger. Give us your thoughts on the hugely successful experiment that was Berkshire Hathaway. For those who don't know. Charlie Munger was from Warren Buffett's hometown of Omaha. He moved to Los Angeles and later reconnected with Warren Buffett, who hadn't really known before, but he had worked for Warren Buffet's grandfather at one point in a store. Charlie Munger was had outspoken, very very smart, a lawyer who transitioned from being a lawyer to being an investor, and his track record early on was actually better than Warren Buffett's in some respects. They teamed up became an incredible team of people who were mostly known to the public through their annual meetings where Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger would answer questions for six hours on end. And Charlie Munger was quite well known for his I would say, dismissive ideas of some other people's thoughts about investing. He was a very fundamentalist kind of investor and he transformed Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett was taught to buy things very cheap, and buy things cheap you can always make money. It was Charlie Munger's view that you should buy good companies. Maybe you pay a reasonable price for it, but buying good companies is better than buying cheap companies which may not be that good. And Warren Buffett gives a lot of credit credit to Charlie Munger for having transformed his views on the investment world. David, thank you for joining us today with us remember, and so Charlie Munger and of course with your excellence. Look for a conversation with Peter Zefino. Peer to peer conversations hugely anticipated in the next ten days. A conversation with Bill Eckman that move I would suggest move Markets. Subscribe to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live every weekday starting at seven am Easter. I'm Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can watch us live on Bloomberg Television and always I'm the Bloomberg Terminal. Thanks for listening. I'm Tom Keen, and this is BloombergSee 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Dive into the future of collaborative PCB design with Altium's latest feature, the PCB CoDesign tool in AD24! In this exciting episode of the Altium OnTrack Podcast, our host, Zach Peterson, sits down with Wojciech Łaś, Product Manager at Altium, to explore the ins and outs of this innovative tool. Discover how the PCB CoDesign tool allows multiple designers to work on the same PCB layout simultaneously, extending Altium's version control system. Learn about the compare and merge tool, a game-changer for detecting, comparing, and resolving conflicts in PCB layout files. Wojciech shares insights into the challenges of coordinating work among multiple designers and strategies to optimize the collaborative workflow. Get a sneak peek into the future roadmap, including upcoming features like merge requests and improved conflict prevention. Find out how Altium's approach differs from real-time collaboration tools and the advantages of asynchronous collaboration. Whether you're a seasoned Altium user or exploring the world of collaborative PCB design, this podcast provides valuable insights and a glimpse into the future of electronic design. Show highlights: PCB CoDesigner Overview Unique Features of the PCB CoDesigner Tool Strategies for Collaborative Design Layer-Stack Locking and Rules System Future Developments: Merge Requests and On-Premise Availability Links and Resources: Learn more about PCB CoDesign Coming Soon in Altium Designer 24

Vondran Legal® Software Audit Defense 2023 Compliance Updates - Call us if you received a demand letter and need copyright legal counsel.  We can be reached at (877) 276-5084. We are starting to get calls from businesses across the United States that are receiving software audit demand letters initiated by the BSA (Business Software Alliance).  The BSA is a software trade association that seeks to hold companies liable for infirngement of software products such as those created by Autodesk, Adobe, Bentley, CNC and others.  They used to do the infringement work for Microsoft, but our intel as of late is that this relationship has ended and MIcrosoft may be working on a ground-breaking Etherium Blockchain software piracy reporting system.  We have received calls from clients who inform us "we have done nothing wrong."  Only to be told that the EULA requires them to fill out an audit spreadsheet form and engage in the process, or risk having their LEGITIMATE PAID software shut down.  If true, how Draconian can a company be, especially in these tough financials times? At any rate, listen in as Attorney Steve® discusses.  Our firm is the clear leader in the United States having handled nearly a 1,000 software audits, and license compliance cases for a variety of software vendors including Siemens, Synopsis, Altium, Microsoft, Adobe, CNC/Mastercam, Autodesk (CAD/Revit/Maya), Vero/Hexagon, Ansys, Solidworks and others.  Vondran Legal is the leading copyright infringement defense law firm in the United States. Call us at (877) 276-5084 and we will discuss your copyright software case with you in confidence. 

Today we have a chat with Daniel Kagerbauer, CTO and co-founder at Inmox. This is a fascinating conversation regarding Inmox's aim to change how industrial maintenance is done and, while their initial focus is on gearboxes, the implications for their software and sensor developments may be broadly applicable across the entire industrial landscape. The two talk about monitoring industrial systems, materials challenges, industry-specific applications, and much more. If you're interested in advancements in the industrial space, this is the episode for you. Show Highlights: Introduction to Daniel Kagerbauer CTO and co-founder of Inmox. Inmox is part of the Altium startup program called Launchpad Inmox is currently developing industry ready prototype and moving towards heavy industrial applications Commercial automotive and even the racing industry is a better fit for Inmox's gearbox monitoring system Daniel describes in detail what their product look like, from a sensor oil screw that can monitor the vehicle's lubrication system, installing T-tube and wiring local ethernets Data are being collected where the wear particles are present, and the oil screw with the lubricant have quite good access to essential stuff that needs measuring Smaller systems are more automative focus while bigger systems are applicable for wind energy versions such as a helicopter, moreover safety is utmost important Certification challenges can involve finances, redesigns and weight optimization How does the real-time particle analysis works? Daniel talks more about distinguishing between ferromagnetic, non-ferromagnetic, and the good old electro magnetism Inmox is currently in negotiation with potential customers and doing interviews with mentors from different industries Body vibration monitoring is more precise and reliable Inmox longterm vision is to promote extended lifespan to machines and pushing mechanical engineering in a more sustainable path Links and Resources: Leap your start-up to the next level. Learn more about Altium Launchpad, a program designed to support early stage start-ups launch their product to the market, fast! Read related articles: PCB Manufacturing Startup Costs: Budget for Tests and Success The Startup's Guide to PCB Manufacturing Electronic Hardware Startup Tips: From Idea to Manufacturing How to Build a Hardware Startup: Beginning to Realize Your Electronics Dreams Visit Inmox website Connect with Daniel Kagerbauer on LinkedIn

Today we're chatting with Jeff De Serrano, President of the American Division of PCB Technologies. We had a fascinating conversation about the changing nature of the PCB Manufacturing industry, focusing on aerospace, automation, AI, education, and much more. This is a wonderful episode for anyone interested in manufacturing and where the industry might be headed. Watch this episode here. Show Highlights: Intro Intro to Jeff & PCB Technologies PCB Technology's Broad Reach in Aerospace Faster Packaging Times Packaging Advantages at PCB Technologies 2D, 2 ½D, or 3D? You Need the Know-How, Not Just People Broad Capability Won't Happen Overnight Semiconductor Companies Packaging? Workforce Challenges Automation Pipedream? Getting Students into Manufacturing Manufacturing is Totally Different Now AI Has a Long Way to Go Growth Areas in Electronics? Links and Resources: Check the recent related OnTrack Podcast episodes: PCB Manufacturing Reshoring, Automation, and Sustainability with Alun Morgan Plug and Play Industrial Automation? It's Only a Matter of Time Learn more about Altium 365®, Where the world designs electronics See how Octopart help you search for electronic parts. It is the most accurate and comprehensive electronic part data search engine right at your fingertips Connect with Jeff De Serrano on LinkedIn Visit PCB Technologies website  

There's a new workflow offering coming soon as a result of the collaboration between Altium and ANSYS. And today, we are joined by Joao Beck, Altium's Director of Enterprise Technical Marketing, to give us all the details. This new workflow is yet another step in Altium's quest toward a digital ecosystem, acting as an important bridge between ECAD and simulation Make sure to watch the entire episode so you can fully understand what's coming your way soon. Show Highlights: 0:00 Intro 0:50 Altium's New Workflow Offering 4:53 MCAD CoDesigner in Simulation? 7:28 A Full Suite of Capabilities 8:20 What the Workflow Looks Like 10:40 What's in the Revision History 12:47 The Report 14:14 Version Control & Rolling Back Simulations? 16:16 Simulation to Altium & Vice Versa 21:43 Mechanical Simulation? 23:00 The Digital Bridge Ecosystem 25:38 Broader Access? 26:42 Who's This For?

It goes without saying finding talent is a big deal in electronics design and manufacturing. John Watson is customer success manager at Altium, with more than 20 years' experience as a senior PCB designer. Watson also teaches classes on printed circuit design at Palomar Community College in San Marcos, CA. We discuss the Printed Circuit Board Design and Advanced Printed Circuit Board Design curricula, other related courses offered at Palomar, and why he emphasizes hand routing over autorouting. Palomar's website is palomar.edu. Watson may be reached at jwatson@palomar.edu or 619-886-8860. Watson will also participate on the Next-Generation Engineers panel at PCB West this year. The conference takes place Sept. 19-22, at the Santa Clara CA Convention Center. The panel takes place on Sept. 20, same day as the exhibition, and is free to attend; register at pcbwest.com.  

Lukas Henkel, our guest in this episode was already into electronic engineering at age 10. He will share with us what made him interested in designing electronics, some details about the development of his Open-source laptop project, and will even give us a sneak peek of the actual design development on Altium Designer. You don't want to miss this! Watch through the end and be sure to check the additional resources below. Watch this episode here Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE Episode Highlights: Lukassz Lawrocki, Technical Marketing Manager at Altium makes a special appearance to explain Altium's new initiative that encourages and supports electrical engineers to create open-source projects The open source Laptop project by Lukas Henkel is the first project to be supported by this new initiative Introduction to Lukas Henkel Lukas talks about his background and his first electronic project at age 10 Robert Feranec  and the Altium OnTrack Podcast are just a couple of Lukas's inspirations for discovering his interest in electronics and PCB design Lukas chose a laptop for his open-source project because of its composition—a variety of components working together Electrical vs mechanical, which one did Lukas find more challenging? The laptop project will have a full aluminum body, which is a cheaper choice for producing prototypes in a smaller volume Lukas talks about why the flex part of the enclosure is one of the challenging parts of his project While there are commercial and open-source tools to help with high-speed signal optimization, complex optimization problems are best solved through a manual process — comparing solutions and comparing the impact of each domain Lukas shares his transition from working with Semikron to his own company, OV Tech Zach and Lukas exchange experiences in running their companies - challenges, projects, and clients Lukas encourages everyone who is interested to learn more about his open-source laptop to follow him on LinkedIn for development updates Design Demonstration via Altium designer Watch for Lukas's next project, the Open Source Smartwatch Links and Resources: Connect with Lukas Henkel via LinkedIn Subscribe to Robert Feranec Youtube Channel Watch all previous Altium OnTrack Podcast episodes Watch related episodes: Robert Feranec and IoT Security Open Source Ventilator Project (OSV) Combats Ventilator Shortage Seven Design Guidelines to Break Bad Habits from Using Open-Source Designs Read: Open Source Hardware & PCB Projects in Altium Designer   Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE

Today we're thrilled to be joined by John Watson, Customer Success Manager at Altium. He and Tech Consultant Zach Peterson chat about the importance of education for designers, what it's like working with students, and what new opportunities there are for PCB designers in today's market. Watch this episode here. Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE Key Highlights: Introduction to John Watson, Altium Customer Success Manager John talks about his teaching profession at Palomar College in San Marcos, California where he teaches Basic and Advanced PCB design The Middle College Program at Palomar College was created for junior and senior high school students to give them a head start in taking college courses The demand for PCB designers is driven by a lack of interested individuals in the industry An increasing number of young engineers are drawn to computer science and software development, while the fields of hardware, electrical engineering, and PCB design are experiencing a declining interest John elaborates on the content covered in his comprehensive 32-week course, encompassing both fundamental and advanced aspects of PCB design Companies are losing their talent every single day through retirement. Now more than ever, there is a huge need to fill the pipeline John shares his early days as an electrician on the kitchen floor with a screwdriver in the toaster John finds Ai concerning, and he doesn't allow it in his class John describes the kind of students he has in his class Overanalyzing is a typical problem for electrical engineers PCBs are works of art Zach describes a PCB designer as a “constraint manager” John works with different organizations to give the students a leap towards their next step after they finished his 32-week course From a janitor to a PCB designer, a winning moment to one of John's students Give back no matter what level we're at, this is John's message to his peers and everyone in the electronics industry There are 25 spots available in John's PCB design course, those who will not make it will be on the waiting list. You can check more information here. Links and Resources: Connect with John Watson on LinkedIn Visit the Palomar College Website Check out John Watson's PCB design course outline here Read John Watson's Blogs Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE

Happy Holden, a legend in the PCB Industry and one of our favorite Altium Industry Expert contributors gives us a trip to his 53 years of experience in the industry. From a chemical engineer, and PCB manufacturing expert to an educator with his countless contribution to the PCB industry's wealth of knowledge through his books, column, and keynote presentations. Watch this episode now Show Highlights: Introduction to Happy Holden and an overview of his career in the PCB Industry What drove the PCB manufacturing off-shore? The printed circuit industry has been all over the map, to begin with Happy shares his early years in printed circuit manufacturing Comparing CAD tools from the 80s and the present – computers, calculators, and software Happy talks about photonic circuits back in 1998 and how it is a hundred thousand times more capable than electronic communication and have no signal integrity issue HP's first notebook computer Happy retired from HP and moved to Taiwan Happy started working at Gentex Michigan The beginning of offshoring the PCB manufacturing and fabrication In Asia, the printing circuit board is like printing money. It is the most profitable industry in the region Globalization took over the industry – emphasis on profit versus jobs Diversifying the supply chain. How to bring some of the manufacturing sides of the industry back to the US? The $52 Billion budget (CHIPS Act 2022) is just a downpayment to bring the 30 years that were lost Would companies start manufacturing their own products? How did HDI technology come about? Links and Resources: Connect with Happy Holden on LinkedIn Read Happy Holden's Articles on Altium's Resource Page Read Happy Holden's Biography on HPMuseum.org Buy Happy Holden's Printed Circuits Handbook, Seventh Edition Download FREE Ebook I-Connect007 Publishes Automation eBook by Happy Holden Watch the Previous Episode with Happy Holden: The Father of HDI PCBs

In this episode, we are fortunate to have two key personalities at Luxonis, a hardware, firmware, software, AI, and simulation company. Erik Kokalj, director of application engineering at Luxonis, and Bradley Dillon, CEO of Luxonis discuss how and who can benefit from AI technology. Tune in and make sure to check out the show notes and additional resources below. Show Highlights: Introduction to Luxonis and its founding on April 2019 The liDAR and radar as an imaging technology, Erik briefly explains the technology behind it Bradley shares why they decided to open-source some aspects of their platform and design Luxonis's AI training, AI conversion, and AI deployment onto hardware are all open-source, for their customers can quickly develop their own model and then deploy it on the device itself Future design updates, miniaturization, and thermal management What are some of the industrial applications that are utilizing the Luxonis imaging technology? Beekeeping was unexpected! Robotic applications on robotic cars, Zach and Erik talk about action recognition on top of object recognition Bradley talks about series 3 products and what's coming in terms of capabilities – processing power, more AI inference Resources and Links: Connect with Bradley Dillon on LinkedIn Connect with Erik Kokalj on LinkedIn Checkout Luxonis Website Watch Luxonis featured on Altium Story: How Luxonis uses Altium 365 to innovate AI Vision systems faster Connect with Zach Peterson on LinkedIn

Join us as we reflect on the best moments and the coolest guests we've had on the OnTrack podcast this year. 2012 has been a whirlwind year for the electronics industry–chip shortages, and a supply chain crunch. Altium has passed several milestones, as well as releasing an education program. And there have been some groundbreaking reports from industry groups highlighting the need for workforce training and development, and workforce shortages coming on the horizon. Watch the episode here Claim the special offer for Podcast listeners only Show Highlights: One of Altium's Milestone is the Altium Education Program In most of the episodes, the issue of automotive chips shortage comes up coupled with the passing of the PCB Act PCB Packaging, and production of integrated circuit substrates  Most requested repeat guests and new faces Links and Resources: Watch all the OnTrack Podcast Episode Register at Altium Education for Free Connect with Zach on LinkedIn Visit Nexar website Visit Octopart website Claim the special offer for Podcast listeners only

It's that time again to have Altium's VP of Marketing, Lawrence Romine, the bearer of good news when it comes to Altium Designer's latest features. We will discuss what's coming in Altium Designer 23 which includes multi-board and harness design capabilities. You don't want to miss this one. Watch through the end and be sure to check the show notes and additional resources below. Watch this episode here Show Highlights Altium Designer®'s regular and reliable updates are incomparable in the industry, stay on top of the monthly updates through the OnTrack newsletter There are 3 major themes to come in Altium Designer 2023Multi-board systems and harness design – empower PCB designers and electrical engineers to design harnesses Collaboration and teamwork Make Altium Designer a necessity for every PCB designer – the world's greatest and most elegant design experience Code Designer, coming soon – the ability to work natively in Altium Designer and in Mcad tool of choice Multi-board and harness design capability, Altium Designer is fully supported through Altium 365 It's never too soon to involve the other stakeholders in your PCB designAltium 365 releases commenting capability to both bombs and draftsman documents New power analysis capability powered by Keysight, anybody that can design a printed circuit board can now do some power analysis Altium Designer users are encouraged to check out all of the extensions, especially the new power analyzer Links and Resources: Connect with Lawrence Romine on LinkedIn Stay on top of Altium Designer versions updates What's new in Altium 365 Read: Come See the New Power Analyzer by Keysight in Altium Designer 22.9 Connect with Zach on LinkedIn Visit Nexar website Visit Octopart website Claim the special offer for Podcast listeners only 

This is a very interesting episode, especially for hardware engineers. Duncan Haldane, the CEO, and co-founder of JITX joins us to share a very interesting approach to PCB design. JITX is a way for hardware engineers to write code to design circuit boards. I know you are excited to hear more! Watch this episode or listen on the go. Be sure to check out the show notes and additional resources below. Watch this episode here Show Highlights: Duncan talks about the Series A funding from Sequoia Capital and the general availability of JITX as an actual product. Duncan's path to engineering started in robotics How can an electrical engineer benefit from JITX? Duncan explained in detail JITX is very well integrated with Altium, it works natively with the existing designs and libraries  Hardware-generated code transforms the job of an engineer a little bit so that they don't have to manually look through all of the different specs for every component that they need JITX is a Nexar partner and uses Octoparts data, in addition, they built a different type of database that's meant for part optimization. Reusable expert hardware engineering knowledge is one of JITX's ultimate goals They are building full automation for boards, new kinds of routing algorithms, new kinds of placement algorithms, and checks for physical geometry The future is optimization Zach and Duncan excitedly talked about AI, and how it can be used to drive some parameters to create new designs Electrical engineers' job is secure, automation can help with the shortage, but will not replace electrical engineers' jobs What the future looks like for JITX Links and Resources: Connect with Duncan Haldane on LinkedIn Visit JITX website Read JITX Launches General Availability And Announces $12M Series A From Sequoia Capital Connect with Zach on LinkedIn Visit Nexar website Visit Octopart website   Claim the special offer for Podcast listeners only

Ben Nibali, founder and President of Aptus Design Works, with Connor Richardson, the Electrical Designer, are our guests in this episode. We will discuss how you can plan the cost and lead times to successfully launch your product in the market. Ben and Connor share some excellent advice for designers and companies to streamline their product development process from prototyping to manufacturing.   Show Highlights: Aptus is a design and engineering company, and they've been around for about 15 years They handle initial concept development, mechanical development, controls, and mechanical prototyping and help their clients through the launching and manufacturing of their products Expecting and avoiding pitfalls comes with experience; in addition, working with trusted vendors and suppliers is huge when honoring set schedules or timeline The natural state of every project is over budget and behind schedule. Ben Nibali stresses the importance of effort and discipline to have complete control of the process  and deliver on time Some unrealistic expectations by Aptus's clients typically involve defying the law of physics Other challenges include expectations from not knowing the process and cost expectations based on the higher volume of current products that really can't be met in a US market-based launch scenario Clients need to realize that there is a proper “cost of engineering” There are also misconceptions about 3D printing–in reality, it takes days to print 3D objects You can't have fast, cheap, and high quality at the same time Software guys may often misunderstand that modifications on hardware  are not as simple to execute as they will be on software The “minimum viable product” is a great idea and works exceptionally well in software because you can add, modify, change, and grow something slowly after you deploy. In hardware, it is an entirely different cost structure to make changes once you start making anything physical.  “Proof of concept” is often neglected when companies want to launch their products immediately Connor Richardson shares the most complex and fun project they did at Aptus Another exciting prototype they created is the cow-milking robot Ben gives designers and companies a piece of advice on how to plan cost and lead times when launching their products The most important factor is market research, understanding what this thing that we're going to sell is? How are we going to sell it? Who's going to buy it? What features matter?  The better the client understands the world they're going to try to sell into and how they're going to sell it, the more valuable our work will be and the higher likelihood that they'll make a profit Creating high-quality products could mean years of planning Links and Resources: Connect with Ben Nibali on LinkedIn Connect with Connor Richardson on LinkedIn Visit Aptus Design Works website Watch How APTUS Designworks uses Altium 365 and Altimade to reduce cost and move more quickly Altium Story presents Breaking down the barriers to progress - APTUS Designworks Claim the special offer for Podcast listeners only  

In this episode, we talk to Lawrence Romine, Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Altium, about how engineering industry trends and the future of manufacturing in engineering will affect engineers. Engineering Quotes: Here Are Some of the Key Points Discussed About How Industry Trends Are Affecting the Engineering Industry: The biggest engineering industry trend from an […] The post TECC 283: How Industry Trends Are Affecting the Engineering Industry appeared first on Engineering Management Institute.

I am very honored to have Bert Simonovich, a very well-known expert in the signal integrity community, in today's episode. Bert developed the "Cannonball-Huray" model used for transmission line loss modeling, which has been adopted in several popular EDA tools.   We will be discussing several topics relating to copper roughness, including different approaches to ensure signal integrity in your PCB design.   Altium 365: Where the World Designs Electronics Watch the video, click here.   Show Highlights: Bert shares his background and experience He did his microprocessor systems back in the late '70s and later worked at Bell-Northern Research in Ottawa, Canada In the 90s he transitioned to Nortel from where he specialized in backplane design and signal integrity He founded Lamsim in 2009 Bert retrospects using photo tools which is now the photo plotting with Gerbers. His experience helped him understand the mechanics of PCB construction A client's demand led to extensive research involving dielectric material comparisons and foil roughness With various PCB surface roughness models, how to determine which process to move forward with? Bert explains the Design Feedback Method Cannonball technique is a roughness modeling approach which Bert also described as a heuristic method Checkout Bert's articles on SI Journal Bert gives a detailed explanation of how copper is being used in PCBs HDP user group international published a research paper Smooth Copper Signal Integrity in 2016 Bert and Zach agree that PCB construction is complicated and it is highly recommended for PCB designers and SI engineers to learn more about the fabrication process What does reverse treated foil means, and how does it relate to the power layer? Read Bert's DesignCon Paper: A Practical Method to Model Effective Permittivity and Phase Delay Due to Conductor Surface Roughness Links and Resources: Connect with Bert Simonovich on LinkedIn Follow Lamsim Enterprises Inc. on LinkedIn Visit Lamsim Enterprises Inc. website Read Bert's Articles on SI Journal   Full OnTrack Podcast Library Altium Website Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE

Making electromagnetic analysis accessible to anyone in the industry is what inspired Yuriy to create SIMBEOR® Electromagnetic Signal Simulator. Yuriy Shlepnev is the founder and president of Simberian. In this episode, he will tell us about Simbeor simulation capabilities, and briefly educate us on rise times, signal integrity, and solving EMI. He will also show us the simulator in action and how it can be a lifesaver to PCB designers like you. Tune in, enjoy and don't forget to check the additional resources below. Altium 365: Where the World Designs Electronics Watch the video, click here. Show Highlights: uriy talks about his background in computational electromagnetics and how he got started working on simulations for PCBs and magnetic analysis  He realized that the byte rates and data rates were increasing, and everything was getting into the microwave domain In 2006,  Simberian was founded as a project to make electromagnetic analysis accessible to anyone in the industry SIMBEOR® was created to make electromagnetic analysis mainstream Simulation capabilities accessible to lower data rates, Yuriy discusses rise times, signal integrity, and solving EMI simultaneously SIMBEOR® 2022 includes three simulation modes, and one of them is the Fast SI which uses more approximate models for pins, pads, and vias. It is a full wave, but not 3D. It allows simulations to run faster for more mass, included Simbeor SDK, a built-in software development kit in Altium Designer's stackup manager. It uses the SFS solver for cross-sectional analysis, and that benefits Altium customers Yuriy shows us the 3D field solver in action Simulation of fiber weave effect on PCBs, is it possible?  Coming soon in Simbeor SDK is the ability to build your own simulation tools Monte Carlo analysis is a perfect way to convert numeric model variations into a probability distribution What is the future of SIMBEOR® that designers can use to help them expedite important analyses for high-speed and RF designs? Links and Resources: Connect with Yuriy Shlepnev on LinkedIn Visit Simberian website and learn more about SIMBEOR® Electromagnetic Signal Integrity Software Read Yuriy's Articles in SI Journal Watch a related podcast episode: Simberian's 3D Field Solver in Altium Designer Full OnTrack Podcast Library Altium Website Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE

The Altium stories flow as Ben Jordan discusses working at Altium with Dave! Ben was a long time Altium employee and PCB and product specialist and still makes Altium tutorial videos on Youtube. He has also worked for Autodesk on Fusion 360. Ben now has his own consulting company Jordan DSP and co-hosts a regular live Youtube show with Bil Herd Follow him on Twitter

Watch the live stream: Watch on YouTube About the show Sponsored by us! Support our work through: Our courses at Talk Python Training Test & Code Podcast Patreon Supporters Brian #1:distinctipy “distinctipy is a lightweight python package providing functions to generate colours that are visually distinct from one another.” Small, focused tool, but really cool. Say you need to plot a dynamic number of lines. Why not let distinctipy pick colors for you that will be distinct? Also can display the color swatches. Some example palettes here: https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/distinctipy/tree/main/examples from distinctipy import distinctipy # number of colours to generate N = 36 # generate N visually distinct colours colors = distinctipy.get_colors(N) # display the colours distinctipy.color_swatch(colors) Michael #2: Soda SQL Soda SQL is a free, open-source command-line tool. It utilizes user-defined input to prepare SQL queries that run tests on dataset in a data source to find invalid, missing, or unexpected data. Looks good for data pipelines and other CI/CD work! Daniel #3: Python in Nature There's a review article from Sept 2020 on array programming with NumPy in the research journal Nature. For reference, in grad school we had a fancy paper on quantum entanglement that got rejected from Nature Communications, a sub-journal to Nature. Nature is hard to get into. List of authors includes Travis Oliphant who started NumPy. Covers NumPy as the foundation, building up to specialized libraries like QuTiP for quantum computing. If you search “Python” on their site, many papers come up. Interesting to see their take on publishing software work. Brian #4: Supercharging GitHub Actions with Job Summaries From a tweet by Simon Willison and an article: GH Actions job summaries Also, Ned Batchelder is using it for Coverage reports “You can now output and group custom Markdown content on the Actions run summary page.” “Custom Markdown content can be used for a variety of creative purposes, such as: Aggregating and displaying test results Generating reports Custom output independent of logs” Coverage.py example: - name: "Create summary" run: | echo '### Total coverage: ${{ env.total }}%' >> $GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY echo '[${{ env.url }}](${{ env.url }})' >> $GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY Michael #5:Language Summit is write up out via Itamar, by Alex Waygood Python without the GIL: A talk by Sam Gross Reaching a per-interpreter GIL: A talk by Eric Snow The "Faster CPython" project: 3.12 and beyond: A talk by Mark Shannon WebAssembly: Python in the browser and beyond: A talk by Christian Heimes F-strings in the grammar: A talk by Pablo Galindo Salgado Cinder Async Optimisations: A talk by Itamar Ostricher The issue and PR backlog: A talk by Irit Katriel The path forward for immortal objects: A talk by Eddie Elizondo and Eric Snow Lightning talks, featuring short presentations by Carl Meyer, Thomas Wouters, Kevin Modzelewski, Samuel Colvin and Larry Hastings Daniel #6:AllSpice is Git for EEs Software engineers have Git/SVN/Mercurial/etc None of the other engineering disciplines (mechanical, electrical, optical, etc), have it nearly as good. Altium has their Vault and “365,” but there's nothing with a Git-like UX. Supports version history, diffs, all the things you expect. Even self-hosting and a Gov Cloud version. “Bring your workflow to the 21st century, finally.” Extras Brian: Will McGugan talks about Rich, Textual, and Textualize on Test & Code 188 Also 3 other episodes since last week. (I have a backlog I'm working through.) Michael: Power On-Xbox Documentary | Full Movie The 4 Reasons To Branch with Git - Illustrated Examples with Python A Python spotting - via Jason Pecor 2022 StackOverflow Developer Survey is live, via Brian TextSniper macOS App PandasTutor on webassembly Daniel: I know Adafruit's a household name, shout-out to Sparkfun, Seeed Studio, OpenMV, and other companies in the field. Joke: A little awkward