4 ms·

I was puzzled a bit, then realized they only handle schematics. Saying "PCB schematics" is weird. A schematic is just a representation of a netlist, something

I was puzzled a bit, then realized they only handle schematics. Saying "PCB schematics" is weird. A schematic is just a representation of a netlist, something where text is more than fine since the graphical form is only for human consumption. An LLM is actually a pretty good fit to cross-reference datasheets and netlists. Would it be actual PCB layout I would be skeptical as LLMs are quite poor at anything spatial. For schematics however, it could work quite well as a double check.

klysm 10mo ago
I don’t buy that it would be very good at reliably finding problems in schematics either. There’s no big dataset on the internet to train on
- wrs 10mo ago
  Some anecdata: This weekend as a lark I asked Claude Code to design a (fairly simple) analog circuit and simulate it in LTSpice to verify. It did three edit-simulate-fix cycles and to my surprise ended up with something that seemed pretty sane. That said, schematics (as opposed to netlists) don't seem to be a practical I/O format yet. It did generate a KiCad schematic file when asked, but it was pretty bad (penguin on a bicycle level). Anyway, somehow there does seem to be some electronic tools training happening, becuase I tried this maybe a year ago and it was pretty hopeless.
  - wafflesfreak 10mo ago
    This is exactly why the first version of our tool worked with netlists only. We've since evolved to parsing the full KiCad project and generating a netlist from it so we can also extract schematic-specific metadata that doesn't make it into the netlist (designer notes/annotations, component positions, etc.)
    - wrs 10mo ago
      This looks great, but I want to know when LLMs will be useful for generating schematics rather than just checking them! It’s such a letdown right now to jump from doing firmware with Claude Code to drawing schematics manually like it’s 2022. :) When does KiCad get its little assistant pane on the right?
      - klysm 10mo ago
        Schematic generation doesn’t really make sense to me because the cost of a problem going unnoticed is much more significant in hardware design than software.
  - asauter 10mo ago
    cool, how did you connect claude to ltspice?
    - wrs 10mo ago
      I just told Claude Code to use the command line LTSpice tool. Actually, I'm not even sure I did that much, I may have just told it to "use LTSpice"!

klysm 10mo ago

I don’t buy that it would be very good at reliably finding problems in schematics either. There’s no big dataset on the internet to train on

wrs 10mo ago
Some anecdata: This weekend as a lark I asked Claude Code to design a (fairly simple) analog circuit and simulate it in LTSpice to verify. It did three edit-simulate-fix cycles and to my surprise ended up with something that seemed pretty sane. That said, schematics (as opposed to netlists) don't seem to be a practical I/O format yet. It did generate a KiCad schematic file when asked, but it was pretty bad (penguin on a bicycle level). Anyway, somehow there does seem to be some electronic tools training happening, becuase I tried this maybe a year ago and it was pretty hopeless.
- wafflesfreak 10mo ago
  This is exactly why the first version of our tool worked with netlists only. We've since evolved to parsing the full KiCad project and generating a netlist from it so we can also extract schematic-specific metadata that doesn't make it into the netlist (designer notes/annotations, component positions, etc.)
  - wrs 10mo ago
    This looks great, but I want to know when LLMs will be useful for generating schematics rather than just checking them! It’s such a letdown right now to jump from doing firmware with Claude Code to drawing schematics manually like it’s 2022. :) When does KiCad get its little assistant pane on the right?
    - klysm 10mo ago
      Schematic generation doesn’t really make sense to me because the cost of a problem going unnoticed is much more significant in hardware design than software.
- asauter 10mo ago
  cool, how did you connect claude to ltspice?
  - wrs 10mo ago
    I just told Claude Code to use the command line LTSpice tool. Actually, I'm not even sure I did that much, I may have just told it to "use LTSpice"!