Can AI design circuit boards yet?

I did manual routing myself, including most positioning, but claude was super helpful in identifying components, reviewing, etc. It was truly a collaboration.

These are my first pcbs ever, I don’t have any edu at all at making pcbs and was really excited to receive working prototypes. The other pretty amazing thing is that I have py scripts that generate the all the kicad files, as a human I wou look d have never done that (for the cost of building the py files) but I find it pretty neat.

To test and rework a surface-mount PCB, you may need:

- logic analyzer or oscilloscope;

- microscope;

- high precision soldering equipment/ability;

- solder paste and oven;

- cutting equipment to cut through 4-6 PCB layers and connect tracks with hair-width wire;

- Years/decades of education and experience to understand what to look for and what to do when you find a problem.

> If you made the PCB then you should be well placed to fix issues with it. You don't need years of experience , you have the schematic. A microscope (if you need it) is 40 USD. A logic analyser is 10 USD. Solder paste and hot air is only for specific parts and that is 30 usd.

This is obviously at the extreme low end of the amount of experience and cost/quality of equipment you need to do serious work. Decent oscilloscopes or logic analyzers alone are several hundred dollars, and I didn’t even mention a programmer module, which is $500+ for a licensed J-Link. And you need to be a proficient C programmer.

> I am assuming 2 layer - 6 layer PCBs are very specialised (e.g. drones)

I am talking about 4-6 layer multi-MCU boards for reading from multiple different types of environmental sensors, connecting to multiple different network types (Bluetooth, cellular, satellite) and supporting multiple different power options (lithium battery, 12V DC, USB, solar). Painstakingly minimized power consumption, redundant data storage. Analogue front end for impedance readings of legacy soil moisture sensors. It’s a lot to get right together and to all work reliably in outdoor/remote contexts. But plenty of products that could be useful to reasonably large numbers of people (e.g. advanced home automation/robotics) would need to be comparably sophisticated.

Elsewhere in the thread you’ve written:

> PCB design is not that hard. People trying to offload this to AI are also unwilling or unable to put in the work to actually diagnose issues and finish the project.

This is a dismissive value judgement against others whose circumstances you don’t know about. It’s clearly hard, relative to other kinds of technology work (web/desktop software etc), and not worth it if you can’t get to volume production and sales.

So, sure, you can learn simple PCB design and get a simple 2-layer board in your hands in a month. Degree-qualified electronics engineers and companies obviously exist to provide the rest of the capabilities needed to get a serious product built and all the way to market and volume sales.

It’s clearly not always as effortless as you’re making it out to be in order to justify the sneer.