Software teams use AI to fix code that sat untouched for decades. Hardware carries the same debt in legacy boards. Flux imports them, runs SPICE, debugs them from a symptom, and exports IPC-2581C.
5 Min Read · Ryan Fitzgerald ·
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Software teams use AI to fix code that sat untouched for decades. Hardware carries the same debt in legacy boards. Flux imports them, runs SPICE, debugs them from a symptom, and exports IPC-2581C.
AI will design robots, satellites, and vehicles. Matthias Wagner explains why better models and engineering environments are changing hardware engineering and the future of CAD.
Run built-in ngspice on existing circuits in imported Altium and Cadence boards. See DC, cutoff-frequency, and rise-time results from two commercial designs.
Your design is your company. Flux does not train on customer data, and your inputs and outputs stay your IP. Here is what to ask any AI vendor before sharing the whole device.
Every Gerber and ODB++ download from Flux now includes a fabrication drawing: assembly views, a drill legend, the stackup, rigid and flex regions, each copper layer, and 3D pictures of the board. Flux makes it from the design, so the drawing and the board always agree.
A frontier model drove Altium through its interface for 62 hours on an 8-layer DDR board. It connected 98.1% of the board, and the board still failed. Agents need the engineering, not the mouse.
Flux designs cantilever snap-fit latches around your board, calculates their strain and forces, and checks the fit. See the prompts, the formulas, and a worked enclosure lid example.
Flux writes the parametric CAD code for a NEMA 17 motor bracket from a plain-language prompt. A complete build123d worked example then builds the same bracket by hand, with selectors, fillets, holes, slots, and STEP export.
Use STEP for enclosure design and STL for printing. Follow a practical board-to-mechanical handoff with units, origins, component heights, and keepouts.
Flux writes and runs embedded unit tests from your schematic, before the board arrives. See how, then follow a worked TMP117 driver example with a fake I2C bus, sanitizers, coverage, and CI.
FreeRTOS is a small kernel you add to a vendor SDK. Zephyr brings its own drivers, Bluetooth, networking, and OTA. One connected sensor, built both ways, shows how the hardware picks the RTOS.
Clearance is the air path between two conductors. Creepage is the surface path. Flux sets both as layout rules and checks the board and the enclosure. This worked example finds both for a 24 W isolated AC/DC supply.
Ask Flux to simulate your 3.3 V rail and compare component-value cases. Follow the LTspice Monte Carlo example to compare 1,000 trials and eight worst-case corners, then choose feedback resistors.
Bring Altair, Altium, SOLIDWORKS, your in-house tools, and the tools Flux writes for you onto Flux's cloud computers. Set each one up once, and your whole team uses it in every project.
Hardware teams get a return on AI when engineers change how they work. Flux product experts onboard each team on a real project, write its standards into Flux, and review the design before manufacturing.
Flux can now send the sheet metal and tube parts it designs to OSH Cut. It checks that each part can be made, fixes what OSH Cut flags, and gets you a live quote, all in one chat.
AI data centers now outbid hardware teams for memory and silicon. Flux finds low-stock and long-lead parts across your electronics and mechanical BOM and swaps in replacements in hours.
Flux is now about 70% cheaper to use. Design work that cost about $1,100 in late August now costs about $330, thanks to the latest models, Adaptive model selection, and our own tools.
An EDA or CAD editor gives you features. The Flux agent combines routing, length tuning, simulation, and checks into workflows that no single feature provides, for the board and the mechanical design.
Robotic lines now build low-volume circuit boards with no changeovers. The slow part is the handoff: Gerbers, zip files, and DFM emails. Here is why design and manufacturing data must stay in one project.
DDR routing is a timing problem, not a constraint-editor task. Flux routes length-matched byte lanes and carries skew limits, topology, and timing budgets through layout changes.
SI, PI, EMC, and DFM review used to need an Altium or Cadence seat and a specialist. In Flux, the agent runs the review, fixes what it finds, and checks the mechanical parts too.
The Flux agent picks decoupling capacitors from a PDN impedance simulation with real vendor ESR and ESL models, and checks load-step droop. No more 100 nF on every pin by habit.
Calculators deskilled long division, and nobody misses it. AI will do the same to hand-routing and redrawing enclosures. The job was never clicking in CAD. It was deciding what to build and making sure it works.
Stack Overflow taught a generation to code by asking strangers. Hardware needs an engineer inside the design, working on the electronics and mechanical assembly together.
MCP servers and computer use let AI agents drive desktop CAD tools one human-sized step at a time. Editing text files is not the answer either. Agents need direct access to the EDA and CAD kernels, and to the simulation and validation tools behind them.
It does not matter if an AI or a human designed a board. What matters is whether it works when it is manufactured: electrical validation, manufacturability, production yield, and the cost to design it.
Apple brought Touch to the Mac just as design input moves to text and voice. Tell the AI engineer what to change, then pinch, pan, and spin the board and its enclosure with your fingers.
Every AI model has strengths and weaknesses, and the best model for one hardware task can be terrible at the next. The breakthroughs will come from domain-specific AI engineers that give each task to the model that does it best.
A full-board, coupled simulation of every electrical, thermal, and electromagnetic effect at interactive speed is not practical. The useful simulations are scoped approximations, and the skill is choosing the scope.
Coding agents can generate hardware designs. Manufacturers already see what happens when those designs do not work. Making it easier for agents to order hardware does not fix that. Making sure the hardware works does.
Design hardware from your phone by voice. Tap the microphone, say what to build or change, and Flux does the PCB and mechanical work. Then check the result in 2D and 3D.
Ask the Flux agent to route a complete board or only the nets you name. Route differential pairs, match lengths, fan out a BGA, break out USB-C, and change widths and layers. Then refine any route in the chat.
Download a complete Flux device as OpenUSD, with its part names, colors, placement, and exact solids. Import a USD part, and let the Flux agent edit it.
Describe a device in one sentence, or show Flux a photo. Flux draws a concept sketch around real parts. When you like the sketch, Flux uses it as the reference for the 3D model.
AI coding took off with AI-native tools, not with agents bolted onto old IDEs. KiCad + Codex is an agent bolted onto a desktop tool. Flux is one shared environment for your team and its AI engineers.
Ask Flux to machine the part that it designed. Flux makes the toolpaths for your mill and gives you the G-code, a toolpath preview, and a setup sheet, in the same project as the board and the enclosure.
The Flux interface is now available in 18 languages, and the Flux agent answers in the language that you write in. Engineers in different countries work in one live project, each in their own language.
Type / in the Flux chat box. You get the commands that you already know from your coding agent: start fresh, switch modes, pick a model, stop, or ask a side question.
Ask the Flux agent to simulate a routed feed. On a real 2.4 GHz board, Flux put the ports on the copper, ran a full-wave simulation, and showed S11 of −33.7 dB and 51.9 Ω at 2.45 GHz, with a field map.
Ask Flux what the cables for your device cost. Flux reads the connectors and nets from your project, picks the mating housings and the wires, and gets a real price and lead time from a harness manufacturer. To order, open the checkout link with the cable already filled in.
Stop sending STEP files. The Flux 3D View puts the board, the enclosure, and your team in one live model, and the agent changes electronics, mechanics, and firmware in one step.
Flux Chat is free. Ask about your device, weigh electronics and mechanical trade-offs, and write the spec in your project. Then build it in Agent mode.
Adaptive gives each hardware engineering task to the model that does it best for the price, and runs many tasks at the same time. Frontier performance at 30% lower cost.
Give the Flux agent your own API keys for distributor pricing, PCB and 3D-print quotes, and any web API, for example Golioth or Arena PLM. The agent sees only a placeholder.
Ask the Flux agent for a video of the product it designed. It makes launch clips, vertical clips, product ads, and multi-shot stories from your board or enclosure.
Upload a STEP, IGES, or BREP file, and the Flux agent rebuilds it as editable CAD code, makes your change, and saves a new model. Your original file stays unchanged.
Flux builds curvature-continuous surfaces with NVIDIA SMLib. Check them in the 3D View with zebra stripes, a curvature map, curvature combs, and a cross section through the enclosure.
Ask Flux for a one-off engineering tool, and the agent builds it as an interactive page in the project's Files tab: a filter plot, converter waveforms, an eye diagram, or a 3D heat sink.
Moving a hardware team to Flux is a change in how engineers work: define intent, direct the AI, verify the result. Six mindset shifts and a four-week pilot plan.
Flux now designs custom hardware enclosures directly from your PCB. Generate manufacturable, 3D-printable cases with cutouts and mounting holes that stay in sync with your board.
A teardown of the input device that set the template for modern controllers — the dog-bone grip, the diamond button layout, and the shoulder buttons nobody had tried before.
Flux leaves private beta: browser-based, collaborative PCB design open to everyone.
8 Min Read · Matthias Wagner ·
Let’s start building.
Let’s build your idea together. All you need to do is describe what you want to make, or what problem you want to solve. Flux will work with you to make it a reality.
