Re:Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code
by napowderly on Monday February 05, 2024 @06:07PM
(#39268472)
For sure, our goal is to solve the toughest problems in electrical engineering, we are starting with the low hanging fruit. Confident reuse of designs that can be verified and validated before a chip is placed sounds pretty exciting to me!
BOM generation and abstraction have definitely not made it to PCBA design yet, so that is where we are starting.
Stoked to get to the hard stuff.
If I may add my two cents, I think you should concentrate on making it possible to go beyond lumped element models (which can already be simulated using SPICE, etc) and simple abstraction (solved by VHDL & co) and focus on being able to offer advanced subsystems to less experienced PCB EDA users. Basically, to go for the Altium path, but without Altium. For example, it would be a killer feature if it were possible to import an FTDI USB chip module and a switching power supply module, and obtain a PCB that has a guarantees (up to a degree) that the two will not interfere with each other. Or say, have it automatically optimize a design to guarantee a certain SWR [3].
[1]: https://www.analog.com/media/en/training-seminars/tutorials/...
[2]: https://f4pga.org/
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_wave_ratio