Every PCB manufacturer has different capabilities, so we need to review JLCPCB’s capabilities to make sure our PCBs are manufactured correctly.

JLCPCB has a list of their capabilities here:

https://jlcpcb.com/capabilities/pcb-capabilities

Review the JLCPCB capabilities before designing a layout to ensure that your design does not need to be redone upon reaching the manufacturing stage.

These capabilities should be inputed in Altium’s Design Rules, and Design Rule Check should be run before every major commit to ensure that constraints are respected. Note that Altium’s default design rules are pretty generous, so most of the time just following those should be fine. However, it is good practice to use JLCPCB’s rules.

JLCPCB does have some advanced manufacturing capabilities that you may find useful. Some of these include 6-layer PCBs and impedence matching. These are usually more expensive, but definitely possible if your board’s design needs it.

Once your board is finalized and ready to order, you will need two files to send for manufacturing: Gerber Files and NC Drill Files. Under File > Fabrication Outputs, you can generate these files in the project’s output files directory. Make sure to have the keep out layer. Then, compress all these files in one zip file, and you can upload it to JLCPCB.

JLCPCB should automatically render the board and detect which selections to make in the settings. Double-check that these are correct, and you are ready to order!