Using Zuken software, your engineers position and route each board manually. Inside Flux, you provide the requirement, and the AI engineer selects the parts, drafts the schematic, and routes the board.
Flux operates as an autonomous hardware engineer for your team. Submit a requirement. It plans development, selects the parts, creates the schematic, routes the board, designs mechanical parts, and codes the firmware. It evaluates its output using simulation and design rule checks, delivering manufacturing files to your engineers.
Zuken makes software for electrical and electronic engineering. Its tools design printed circuit boards, multi-chip modules, and wiring harnesses.[1]
Its PCB tools include CR-8000, CADSTAR, and eCADSTAR.[1]
Flux chooses parts from 734,000+ public parts featuring live prices and stock. It drafts the schematic, positions the parts, and routes the board like an experienced designer. The tool validates your design against every datasheet. It runs circuit and full-wave electromagnetic simulation, then provides manufacturing files. Your engineers inspect and edit the output. Flux operates inside your web browser.
| Feature | Flux | Zuken |
|---|---|---|
| Requirements and specification | The AI engineer turns your idea into requirements and a product specification, and checks the design against them. | CR-8000 Circuit DR Navi manages PCB design requirements and checklists.[8] |
| What it is | AI hardware engineer with integrated design tools | PCB and electrical design software[1] |
| Where it runs | In your web browser. Nothing to install. Your projects live in the cloud. | Desktop software for Windows[7] |
| Who does the design work | The Flux AI. Your engineers review and edit. | Your engineers[1] |
| Schematic and parts | Built in. Selects from 734,000+ public parts. | Built in[1] |
| Placement and routing | The AI positions the parts and routes the board similar to a senior designer. Your engineers check and edit. | Your engineers place and route each board in the tool[1] |
| High-speed design | The AI engineer plans DDR topology and timing budgets, routes differential pairs and length-matched buses, tunes length and skew, fans out BGAs with blind, buried, and microvias, and sets trace impedance from your stackup. It checks the routed board with S-parameters, TDR, eye diagrams, crosstalk analysis, and a signal integrity, power integrity, and EMC review. Your engineers review and edit. | CR-8000 includes signal-integrity and power-integrity analysis.[3] |
| Flex and rigid-flex boards | Built in. Named stackups for rigid and flex areas, coverlay and stiffeners, hatched flex pours, bending lines with a folded 3D view and folded STEP files, flex design checks, and Gerber, ODB++, and IPC-2581 files. The AI engineer routes each area on its own layers. | Flexible and flexi-rigid boards in CR-8000 Design Force. Your engineers draw the bend lines and route each board.[10] |
| Parts and sourcing | 734,000+ public parts, providing real-time pricing and stock from distributors | DS-CR, a library manager for the symbols and footprints that your team maintains[2] |
| Simulation and design rule checks | SPICE, full-wave electromagnetic, power delivery network, signal integrity, thermal, and mechanical simulation; design rule checks are included. | Signal integrity, power integrity, and EMI analysis in Design Force, plus integrations with Ansys and Keysight[3] |
| Firmware | Writes firmware for the board it designed | Not in Zuken[3] |
| Wiring harnesses | Built in. Flux designs the cables between your boards: connectors, pinouts, and wires, within a single project. | E3.series, a separate product for wire harness and cable design[5] |
| Manufacturing files | Gerber, ODB++, IPC-2581, bill of materials, pick-and-place, and more; Flux can check the files before you order, then check copper gaps, silkscreen, board outline, BOM, and pick-and-place files. | Design-for-manufacturing checks, fabrication and assembly drawings, and CAM outputs[4] |
| Quotes and orders | Quotes and orders for boards, 3D printing, CNC machining, and wire harnesses, from the project. | E3.series produces bills of materials and manufacturing quotes.[6] |
| Import from other tools | Imports complete projects from Altium, OrCAD and Allegro, KiCad, PADS and Xpedition, CADSTAR, Eagle, Fusion Electronics, EasyEDA, DipTrace, and SOLIDWORKS PCB. Flux imports Labcenter Proteus SDF netlists with Specctra board exports. IPC-2581 revision B and C files become board projects with reusable footprint parts. IDF 2.0 and 3.0 board files become board projects with the outline, cutouts, drilled and mounting holes, part placements, and 3D part heights. | CR-8000 supports importing and exchanging design data.[3] |
| Versions, branches, and merges | Full change history. The AI engineer forks a design into a second version, keeps both, and merges the changes that you pick. | CR-8000 manages releases, revisions, and configurations.[3] |
| Who reviews the work | The whole team, in one live project in the browser: electrical, layout, mechanical, and firmware engineers | Your engineers review CR-8000 designs with Board Viewer.[7] |
| Product images, videos, and documents | Product images, product videos, datasheets, and regulatory documents, made from the design in the project. | CR-8000 visualizes multiple PCBs in their mechanical enclosure in 3D.[9] |
| Parallel work | The primary AI divides a product into workflows across multiple projects, runs them concurrently, and returns results. Major modifications wait for your approval. | Several boards in one design environment. Your engineers lay out each board.[4] |
| Tool licenses | Provided with your Flux plan: the editor, mechanical CAD, parts data, simulation, and manufacturing files. No extra fees. | CR-8000, E3.series, and DS-CR are separate products[3] |
| Plus the mechanical parts | ||
| Mechanical CAD | Included natively, kernel agnostic. From a basic enclosure to a full robot arm. | Imports enclosures from mechanical CAD into the multi-board design[3] |
| Mechanical simulation | Finite-element stress, thermal, and airflow simulation | CR-8000 evaluates thermal characteristics of electronic systems.[3] |
| Mechanical manufacturing | STEP, STL, and 3MF files, plus quotes for 3D printing, CNC machining, sheet metal, and laser cutting | Not in Zuken[3] |
| CNC toolpaths and G-code | The AI engineer writes the toolpaths, the G-code, a toolpath preview, and a setup sheet for the parts that it designed. | Not in Zuken[3] |
Start a Flux project free and describe the device you want to build.
Flux positions the parts and routes the board similar to a senior designer, following your design intent and your layout rules.
Flux selects from 734,000+ public parts. The system checks real-time pricing and inventory quantities across distributors before it puts a part on the board.
Flux tests every board against your layout rules and your fabricator capabilities.
Flux reads the datasheet of every part and validates the design against documented pinouts, ratings, and limits.
Import your CADSTAR project. Instruct the AI to modify it. Then proceed to production: Flux supplies the file formats your manufacturer requires.
Example request
“Include an additional CAN transceiver using available parts, and route it to the connector.”
Altium Designer 
OrCAD and Allegro 
KiCad 
PADS, Xpedition, and NX 
CADSTAR 
Eagle and Fusion 
EasyEDA 
SolidWorks 
CATIA 
Creo 
Onshape Load entire projects, part libraries, and 3D models. The system imports schematics, parts, placement, and routing from most standard formats.
Transferred designs are immediately editable. Instruct the system to "move the USB cutout 3 cm left" or "make the enclosure tighter", and Flux does the work.
Flux provides the file formats required by your manufacturer: Gerber, ODB++, IPC-2581, bill of materials, and pick-and-place files for the board, plus STEP, STL, or 3MF for the mechanical parts.
Orchestration
Submit a full product to Flux. The primary AI divides it into workflows, starts simultaneous tasks across multiple projects, manages their progress, and returns deliverables.
Every workflow operates inside an independent AI process. The main board, daughterboards, and enclosure develop concurrently.
The primary AI initiates tasks inside other projects and monitors updates from a central location.
The system tracks every active process, steers work that deviates from the brief, and gathers the results.
Modifications that move an interface or change board dimensions wait for your approval.
Flux drafts a specification for every board: its outline, mounting holes, connectors, and the matching enclosure cutouts. Each board gets a separate project and a dedicated AI engineer, and all three are designed at the same time. Flux then puts the finished boards in the main assembly and measures the clearances and the connector alignment in millimeters.
Verification lab
Flux goes beyond generating hardware designs. The AI engineer evaluates its output using professional-grade solvers, then displays those results to you.
SPICE simulation for analog, power, and mixed-signal circuits, run and analyzed by the AI engineer.
Full-wave simulation evaluating the routed board for impedance, S-parameters, crosstalk, and antennas.
Electrical and manufacturing rule checks applied to every schematic and board.
Processes the datasheet of every part to validate the design against pinouts, ratings, and limits.
Heat and airflow simulation applied to boards and enclosures before you build them.
Ventilation and cooling analysis inside the case to ensure vents, fans, and heat sinks function correctly.
Finite-element stress analysis applied to brackets, enclosures, and mounts.
Sourcing
Flux links directly with major suppliers of electronic and mechanical parts. The AI chooses chips, connectors, screws, and standoffs that are in stock. It evaluates costs among different distributors and substitutes end of life parts before manufacturing starts.
Digi-Key 
LCSC 
Mouser 
Arrow 
Verical 
TME 
HQonline 
McMaster-Carr 
MISUMI 
JLCMC Manufacturing
Flux fetches pricing directly from your fabricators for boards and assembly, metal and plastic 3D printing, CNC machining, sheet metal, laser cutting, injection molding, casting, and wiring harnesses. The AI compares cost versus delivery time, validates the design against factory rules, and updates the estimate as the design changes.
JLCPCB 
PCBWay 
OSH Park 
AISLER 
Craftcloud JLC 3D printing PCBWay 3D printing 
Shapeways 
OSH Cut 
SendCutSend 
MiniProto The board, the mechanical parts, and the firmware live in a single project. The AI can modify the board and the mechanical parts concurrently. You avoid moving files between an EDA application, a mechanical program, and a code editor.
You skip installations and avoid maintaining a license server. Flux operates on any computer running a modern web browser.
Share your project using a link. Multiple team members can apply edits simultaneously. No one emails files or asks which revision is newest.
New features and new AI models appear automatically. You skip installing new versions or migrating your projects.
The system provides 734,000+ public parts. You avoid building a part library before you begin.
Invite collaborators using a link. Single sign-on and project-level permissions manage who sees your work.
One platform
Flux operates differently than isolated CAD applications. It functions as a unified AI-native engineering platform where all disciplines access one shared project, identical data, and a single AI engineer.
Construct parametric enclosures, brackets, and mounts aligned with the real board's mounting holes and connectors. Import your existing STEP models. One parts library covers the entire product: chips and connectors, off-board items, and mechanical hardware like screws and standoffs.
Firmware for the board Flux generated, on platforms like Arm Cortex-M, RISC-V, AVR, or Pico, then compiled, analyzed, and unit tested.
Model-agnostic AI
Flux connects frontier AI models to a modern engineering architecture designed for CAD and EDA. The models deliver reasoning. Flux supplies the engineering tools, project context, and workflows that transform reasoning into physical hardware.
Adaptive divides every engineering job into tasks. It gives each task to the model that provides optimal performance for the price. Complex design decisions go to frontier models. Standard work runs on quick, low-cost models. Independent tasks run concurrently, so complete devices finish faster. Your team works with one AI engineer, and Flux manages this process in the background.
Use the frontier models your team currently trusts, inside Flux.
Every model receives Flux's project context, workflows, and specialized engineering tools.
Whenever a newer model ships, your team accesses it without changing engineering platforms.
Avoid depending on one specific model provider for your engineering capacity.
Adaptive pairs each engineering step to the correct model, from complex design decisions to routine rule checks.
For learning and evaluation, with light AI usage and unlimited manual editing.
For active hardware projects, with included AI usage and additional usage available.
For larger projects and heavier AI usage, with hands-on support from experienced electrical engineers.
For teams on shared projects, with pooled AI usage, member seats, and priority support.
Eligible individual plans include a free trial. Teams subscriptions start paid; trial and pricing terms depend on your current offer. See all plans
Not ready to pick a plan? Start for free
Use Zuken tools if your engineers prefer to manually design every board. Use Flux if you prefer an AI engineer to perform the design work while your engineers review it.
Review our individual plan options, or schedule a demo with our team.
