I had a play with the tscircuit CAD tool which they're writing this autorouter for. It's hardware-as-code, leveraging React.
I love the concept of schematics-as-code. But layout-as-code is awful. Maybe AI tools will improve it enough - but unless there's a user friendly escape hatch which lets you tweak things with a mouse, it's a dead end.
I've had the same problem with auto-generated wiring diagrams and flowcharts. Great in theory, but then the tool generates some ugly thing you can't make sense of and there's no way to change it.
There's definitely tremendous potential for AI in electronic design. But I think the really complicated bit is component selection and library management - you have to somehow keep track of component availability, size and a range of parameters which are hidden on page 7 of a PDF datasheet. Not to mention separate PDF application notes and land patterns.
Compared to all that, connecting up schematic lines and laying out a PCB is fairly straight forward.
Love that you tried the tool and couldn't agree more. We think that new layout paradigms similar to flex and CSS grid need to be invented for circuit layout. This is an active area of research for us!
I love the concept of schematics-as-code. But layout-as-code is awful. Maybe AI tools will improve it enough - but unless there's a user friendly escape hatch which lets you tweak things with a mouse, it's a dead end.
I've had the same problem with auto-generated wiring diagrams and flowcharts. Great in theory, but then the tool generates some ugly thing you can't make sense of and there's no way to change it.
There's definitely tremendous potential for AI in electronic design. But I think the really complicated bit is component selection and library management - you have to somehow keep track of component availability, size and a range of parameters which are hidden on page 7 of a PDF datasheet. Not to mention separate PDF application notes and land patterns.
Compared to all that, connecting up schematic lines and laying out a PCB is fairly straight forward.