1. Signal Layers

Altium Designer can provide up to 32 signal layers, including Top Layer, Bottom Layer and Mid-Layer. The layers can be connected to each other through vias, blind vias and buried vias.

Signal Layers

(1) Top Layer

Also called the component layer, on which components are placed. For double-layer boards and multi-layer boards, it can be used to arrange wires or coat copper.

(2) Bottom Layer

Also called the solder layer, it is mainly used for wiring and soldering. For double-layer boards and multilayer boards, components can be placed on it.

(3) Mid-Layers

There can be up to 30 layers, which are used to arrange signal lines in a multilayer board. The power cord and ground wire are not included here.

2. Internal Planes

This layer only appears in multilayer boards. The number of PCB layers generally refers to the sum of the signal layer and the internal electrical layer. Same as the signal layer, the internal planes and the internal planes, and the internal planes and the signal layer can be connected to each other through vias, blind vias and buried vias.

Internal Planes

3. Silkscreen Layers

A PCB can have up to 2 silk screen layers, namely Top Overlay and Bottom Overlay. The color of the silk screen layer is generally white, which is mainly used for printing information, such as the outline and labeling of components, various annotation characters, etc., to facilitate the soldering of PCB components and circuit inspection.

(1) Top Overlay

It is used to mark the projection outline of the components, the label, nominal value or model of the component, and various annotation characters.

(2) Bottom Overlay

Same function as Top Overlay. However, if all the labels have been printed on the Top Overlay, then this layer is unnecessary.

4. Mechanical Layers

The mechanical layer is generally used to display indicative information about the manufacturing and assembly methods, such as the outline size of the PCB, size markings, data materials, via information, assembly instructions and other information. This information varies according to the requirements of the design company or PCB manufacturer. The following examples illustrate our common methods.

Mechanical 1: Generally used to draw the frame of the PCB as its mechanical shape, so it is also called the shape layer.

Mechanical 2: Used to mark the PCB processing process requirement form, including information such as dimensions, plates, and layers.

Mechanical 13 & Mechanical 15: Used to mark the body size information of most components in the ETM library, including the three-dimensional model of the component.

Mechanical 16: The footprint information of most components in the ETM library can be used to estimate the PCB size in the early stages of the project; for the simplicity of the page, this layer is not displayed by default, and the color is black.

5. Mask Layers

Altium Designerprovides two types of mask layers (Solder Mask) and Paste Mask (Mask Layers), in which there are two layers, the top layer and the bottom layer, which will not be described in detail here.

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