logoalt Hacker News

knicholeslast Wednesday at 7:04 PM7 repliesview on HN

Right. KiCAD for PCB design. Blender for 3D CAD. Oh, are you saying I should have used something other than the KiCAD MCP server for better results?


Replies

VorpalWaylast Wednesday at 8:57 PM

Designing circuit board and 3D models (even using something like OpenSCAD) is a very spatial process today. You are dealing with coordinates one way or another.

This is very unlike how FPGA and (I assume) ASIC is done. That is more like a traditional programming language but everything happens all at once (no sequence of statements outside tests, if you need that you have to write a state machine yourself). You define logic expressions between signal, add stateful latches, etc. But you never specify the physical layout.

Instead you feed your description to a tool that acts a constraint solver/optimiser that computes the layout for you (this is for FPGAs called synthesising IIRC, it is akin to a compiler). Typically quite slow, even for small circuts like we did at university it took minutes, and for large circuits it might easily days.

Now, this raises the question, what if you design a PCB net list using AI, but then use traditional autorouting and layout? I believe that can also be done, but I have no experience designing PCBs, so I don't know how well it works.

quadraturelast Wednesday at 7:45 PM

VHDL is not a language for spatial design. Its more akin to a programming language with circuit semantics.

y1n0last Wednesday at 9:51 PM

For digital chip design, research Verilog and/or SystemVerilog, and for tools, check out verilator and the OSS cad suite: https://github.com/YosysHQ/oss-cad-suite-build

dcrazylast Wednesday at 7:14 PM

They’re saying that VHDL is an entirely different concept than physical modeling.

giancarlostorolast Wednesday at 7:40 PM

You're comparing apples and oranges.

cwillulast Wednesday at 7:55 PM

Meta: can we not downvote people who are clarifying what they're saying and asking questions, even if they're wrong about something, if the content isn't otherwise objectionable?

show 2 replies
tamimiolast Wednesday at 7:54 PM

One (kicad) make the board, the other (blender) make the casing for it. Both are “hardware” but is electronics and the other is mechanical. Electronic one AI can do a good job, I can’t wait for it to fully built the whole circuit for you based on your specs.