Building a board 4 layers in Altium Designer

[TiagoRibeiro]

I am beginner in the Altium, and need guidance on how to proceed with the schematic and pcb layout mainly. The board will keep all the components welded on one side only. The other side will need to be free to be engaged in an LCD. I have many doubts, did just a basic course to know and use the basic tools available in Altium.
It will be very difficult to do this task with such knowledge?
I need to save the maximum of possible space.
What is the best way to position the layers?
I was thinking like this:
Top GND =
Middle 1 = 3V3
2 = middle Signal
Bottom = Signal
I saw in some projects a tool called Split Plane, but do not know use it there, I'll do a little research on it.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your Help.:wink:

 

[Dan Mills]

the usual layer stackup for 4 layer is to bury the ground and power with the signal traces run on the outside.

Split planes are useful when you have multiple power rails but great care must be taken when crossing a split with a signal, lest you create a huge current loop and fail EMC testing.

Do use the hierarchical design features, they are there for good reason, and remember that 80% of the pcb is component placement and creating good footprints, get the placement right and the board usually almost routes itself, get it wrong and ratsnest does not begin to cover the horror.

Altium has really good design rules, use them (also net classes), most useful for cutting down on the potential for error.

Forget auto routing, it is almost always horrible unless you spend weeks setting up the rules.

Do remember to place the mounting holes (Embarassing, that), and if you have large modules that plug in (LCD?), then importing a step model is worthwhile as it can make catching mechanical issues in a compact assembly much less error prone, same thing if yoy have a complex housing.

Regards, Dan.

 

[Kick]

The layer stack-up should be SIGNAL(TOP),GND,PWR and SIGNAL(BOTTOM) for 4-layer board,that is the standard one.If you change the order I think it will affect your proper working of circuit.
For saving space,try to use SMT type components.

 

[marce]

Here are some useful basic links regarding PCB design, you have a fair bit to learn....

 

[ArticCynda]

From a manufacturing perspective the layer stack up order won't matter, planes and signal layers are manufactured identically. Having planes sandwiched between signal layers on the outside is critical for controlled impedance applications (i.e. antennas etc) but for low speed digital designs like LCD displays it really won't matter much.

I usually prefer signal layers on top and bottom because it allows me to place components on one side and small passives like decoupling caps on the other side. Having traces inside the board makes debugging harder because you can't reach those traces to probe them.