The first thing you probably asked yourself when learning how to lay out PCBs was “can’t the computer do this?” which inevitably led to the phrase “never trust the autorouter!”. Even if it hooks up a few traces the result will probably be strange to human eyes; not a design you’d want to use.

But what if the autorouter was better? What if it was so far removed from the autorouter you know that it was something else? That’s the technology that JITX provides. JITX is a company that has developed new tools that can translate a coarse textual specification of a board to KiCAD outputs autonomously.

How do you use JITX? At this point the company provides a front end to their tools; you use their website contact form to talk to a human (we assume) about what you want to make and how. But watching their demo videos (see the bottom of this post) gives a hint about how the tooling actually works. In brief; it takes a specification in a domain specific language that describes the components to use, then compiles (synthesizes?) that into KiCAD files that can be sent to fab.

Removing the Human from the Equation

What level of abstraction does JITX work at? If it was an autorouter you’d select components and do some floor planning to place components before hitting the go button and getting a coffee, maybe even lay down some of the more complex tracks. That is to say, there is no abstraction at all. JITX can operate at a much higher level. You can specify which parts go exactly where and use it as an autorouter but where the tool shines is when the human specifies less, not more. The user can plug in specific components, board outlines and the like. But they can also just say “micro USB connector” and “Teensy 3.6” and JITX will figure out what connects where, place components, lay out tracks, and crop to a board outline.

But it can go even higher level than that. [Duncan] the founder and CEO told IEEE that you can “request a board with BLE and a microphone” and the tool can do everything else. It will select parts, figure out support infrastructure like power supplies, place the components, route the board, and emit design files. That’s damn near the entire design from napkin to product, which incidentally is a service JITX offers.

Control Freak v Push Button Designs

So the next question is who is this for? We have electrical engineers who may feel somewhat displaced by a technology that replaces large parts of their workflow. Even if they used it, do they effectively become programmers? Or HDL-authors (nowadays engineers who write HDL would be working on FPGAs or similar)? One could imagine an EE using a tool like JITX to augment their process by designing the totally bone-headed parts of a project which require no creativity. We’re not sure JITX would …read more

Source:: Hackaday