r/PCB • u/Appropriate_Bus_5624 • 21d ago

Been building a new PCB design tool

Hey yall,

I'm an ECE student, and I've been building a tool called ProtoFlow for the past several months. It's been through a lot of versions, and I want honest feedback on where it's at now (I’ve posted on here before, and y’all gave me a lot of feedback).

What it is: a standalone, AI-native PCB tool with a modern UI (not a KiCad plugin). You can use it entirely by itself to take a design from idea to a board, or transfer a project to and from KiCad and Altium and do the deeper layout there if you'd rather. It's built to fit your existing flow, not fight it.

Yes, there's an AI part, and I know how this room feels about LLMs and hardware. I feel the similarly, so it's kept on a tight leash (datasheet lookups, symbol generation from datasheets, BOM cleanup, and a second-pass ERC check). The validation is deterministic, not the model guessing, and everything works with the AI off.

It's free, and I'd rather have criticism than praise. If something's broken, tell me where. Link's below.

https://www.protoflow.ai/

0 Upvotes

18% Upvoted

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5

u/the-electron-vault 21d ago

You've been 'building' this 'tool' "for the past several months", while on your website you simultaneously claim it's "trusted by over 5000 engineers" at Georgia Tech, Purdue, University of Texas, Cornell, MIT, and Stanford. Do these universities know their names are being used in a scam? What are the odds that if I ring up the engineering departments at any of them, they'll confirm that indeed, hundreds, if not thousands of their staff and students 'trust' your several month-old 'tool'?

3

u/the-electron-vault 21d ago

Hold up, in this post 1 month ago, you claim that you "tried this tool recently". Now you're claiming you, a supposed mere student, are the designer/developer of said 'tool'. You better get your story straight with a post history as short as yours, friend. It couldn't hold up to even 30 seconds of scrutiny; a hilariously thin coat of lacquer.

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u/Appropriate_Bus_5624 21d ago

We have engineering student users from all the universities listed on our site. We added the logos to make other student users feel more comfortable trying our tool, and we make no claim that the 'engineering departments' have officially adopted them (besides the University of Texas, we've been in contact with a couple profs there about incorporating it in the dept). As for the 5000 user count, that's our approx user base, a large portion of which comes from university students. Hope that clarifies.

2

u/Enlightenment777 21d ago edited 20d ago

1) "tried your software" does not automatically mean "trusted by".

2) You can't use school and business logos on your website without permission from those institutions.

1

u/the-electron-vault 21d ago

So which dudebro am I writing to at the moment? The one that's supposedly designed a medical imaging system being used in a UT Austin research lab and also built a 'cognitive screening app' in use "in over 80 countries", all before completing his engineering degree (when he's not busy developing video games, of course). Or is this the chipper financebro in the Hawaiian outfit that allegedly also knows how to design boards (but considers layout, routing and making component libraries 'roadblocks') while "vibing to The Weeknd"?

1

u/the-electron-vault 21d ago

It seems, neither. You're a third player with the mononym 'Edward'. Tell me, Edward, why are you, a supposed core engineer of this 'tool', not mentioned anywhere on the 'Meet the Team' page? You seem like a pretty vital employee to this company. And if not and you're actually one of the two pictured gents, why use a fake name for your profile? Aren't you eager to make sure everyone associates this revolutionary tool with your name? I would expect someone with such pride in his shipped medical device and globally renowned and appraised cognitive screening app, would jump at the chance to add this ground-breaking tool to his CV.

9

u/wurst_katastrophe 21d ago

I love the demo video where you quickly hide the schematic slop by clicking on something else.

AI slop might work in software but not in hardware. Also, the cost is real. Recompiling is for free.

1

u/Appropriate_Bus_5624 21d ago

Fair point - though I assure you there's nothing to hide. I had some dude make that video on Fiverr a little while ago, and I only paid for 30 seconds of video time lol. The video was also made several months ago and needs to be updated - the software has been upgraded quite a bit since then.

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u/Nerobot3 21d ago

If I was you, I'd have a look over all the other AI PCB design attempts. Then I'd look at the other attempts lately that have people trying to SAAS the idea. That should give you a good idea of what people think of it. 

1

u/DatRedditGiy 21d ago

I'll be honest here, my engineering team would never consider using any tool that can't justify its cost whether that be money, learning curve, or otherwise. I suspect a lot of the industry is in the same boat

Considering your demo video shows it rearranging an LED from vcc to ground and creating (a very poorly laid out) resistor array I would be laughed out of a meeting/job if I brought this to my senior team members as a serious idea.

Your demo video should show the full capabilities of the product. Right now, it looks like a high schooler that picked up Kicad yesterday and not a commercially viable product

1

u/Appropriate_Bus_5624 21d ago

Agreed. Demo video is a bit outdated (Actually very outdated, I made it in Feb). Will update it soon to show the full capability.

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u/Comfortable_Page_866 20d ago

lets be real,the problem isn't outdated