[ben_w]

That's mildly surprising to me, given what I've seen when I ask current models to make an SVG of something.

Would I be on the right track if I guessed there's a DSL for designing PCBs that would help enforce functional correctness?

[throwaway219450]

A lot of human PCB errors could be caught by analyzing the netlist against requirements and knowledge of the datasheet. Schematic and board formats are usually plaintext, so you can generate those directly even. Or kicad + python?

That’s probably enough for an LLM to check if you’ve mis-wired something, missed a part or chose the wrong resistor to set a regulator voltage. Plus good old DRC/ERC. If you pass all of those, there’s a good chance things will work unless your placement is really bad, but you could manually lay out and autoroute a lot of simple boards. Not to belittle the parent but a 4 layer board is actually simpler in some ways because you have a power plane which is one less net to worry about.

For analog work you can even run a SPICE simulation.

[mapontosevenths]

You got it. It was kicad and python, with the builtin DRC/ERC. It had to iterate quite a lot to get it to pass, but once it did the board was solid, if not elegant. I almost feel like kicad was the real hero.

A human would have done a better job, and maybe used half the PCB... but it got it done and at the end of the day the board is 100% functional, and 100% machine designed.

[taneq]

Maybe there’s more PCB designs on the internet than there are pelicans riding bikes? ;)

[ben_w]

Could well be, but my case was "illustrate this orbit" rather than copying Simon Willson.

After a few rounds, I gave up on asking the LLM and just drew my SVG in BBEdit.