After the OAI demo, like many others, I tried to use KiCAD through computer-use. This doesn't produce great results.
I have found the best results through a mix of Happy[0], this repo, and computer use to fill in the blanks.
It is _really_ good at the stackup and part config, but creates some absolutely terrible routes. It will snake tiny traces through some SMD pins even though there is plenty of space available outside of the component. When it hits an obstacle, instead of creating 2 45 degree turns, it does 10~30 small ones creating some sort of weird crooked arc.
I have produced a couple of boards for testing this way and they are generally functional.
I have tried KiCadRoutingTools[1] as well which does seem to create routes that make more sense.
Anyone any better experiences with these or similar tools?
We have developed something similar inhouse (a CLI tool for agents that has a few dozen utilities for manipulating KiCad files) and the results are pretty good. In terms of complexity, I would say that tasks like "replicate the layout from the datasheet of this amplifier and make me a testboard" or "look, we need an adapter that goes from <this devkit (insert PDF schematic)> to <these boards (insert KiCad file)>" are basically solved. More dense layouts are a stretch at the moment. (speaking about Opus 5.5 specifically here, other models are likely worse at these visual-coding tasks anyway)
In terms of result quality, I would say that the results are distinctly "2024/2025 LLM programming quality". The models lack a certain... taste? Good and careful prompting can help, but for example "use hierarchical sheets" can yield a single hierarchical sheet containing 3 copies of the same thing instead of three instances of a hierarchical sheet containing the same thing once. When pointed out, the model can of course do it no problem the way you want.
After the OAI demo, like many others, I tried to use KiCAD through computer-use. This doesn't produce great results.
I have found the best results through a mix of Happy[0], this repo, and computer use to fill in the blanks.
It is _really_ good at the stackup and part config, but creates some absolutely terrible routes. It will snake tiny traces through some SMD pins even though there is plenty of space available outside of the component. When it hits an obstacle, instead of creating 2 45 degree turns, it does 10~30 small ones creating some sort of weird crooked arc.
I have produced a couple of boards for testing this way and they are generally functional.
I have tried KiCadRoutingTools[1] as well which does seem to create routes that make more sense.
Anyone any better experiences with these or similar tools?
[0] https://github.com/aklofas/kicad-happy [1] https://github.com/drandyhaas/KiCadRoutingTools
We have developed something similar inhouse (a CLI tool for agents that has a few dozen utilities for manipulating KiCad files) and the results are pretty good. In terms of complexity, I would say that tasks like "replicate the layout from the datasheet of this amplifier and make me a testboard" or "look, we need an adapter that goes from <this devkit (insert PDF schematic)> to <these boards (insert KiCad file)>" are basically solved. More dense layouts are a stretch at the moment. (speaking about Opus 5.5 specifically here, other models are likely worse at these visual-coding tasks anyway)
In terms of result quality, I would say that the results are distinctly "2024/2025 LLM programming quality". The models lack a certain... taste? Good and careful prompting can help, but for example "use hierarchical sheets" can yield a single hierarchical sheet containing 3 copies of the same thing instead of three instances of a hierarchical sheet containing the same thing once. When pointed out, the model can of course do it no problem the way you want.
Better if you rename it:
https://kdeconnect.kde.org/
JLC part search is huge