We're pleased to announce the launch of Physics Rule Checks (PRCs) in Quilter, which work alongside existing Design Rule Checks (DRCs) to ensure Quilter layouts:
Physics Rule Checks are fully automated “unit tests” that Quilter creates for each physics constraint defined in your schematic.
After generating a layout, Quilter runs a targeted suite of PRCs to quantify the design quality of each candidate, and packages these results into a report for you to review.
When viewed alongside DRCs, physics rule checks make it easier to explore and understand design tradeoffs between manufacturability, cost, and performance so you can optimize for what’s most important to you.
We'll soon be integrating PRCs more deeply into Quilter’s candidate review experience, including using PRC results to drive candidate recommendations, filtering options, and enhanced visual review workflows.
We're excited to hear what you think!
Before publishing updates to our AI design engine, we first complete a standardized benchmarking process. This process – which we call ”Qtest” – ensures all changes we make push system performance up and to the right.
Qtest is composed of a suite of internal test boards that fully exercise Quilter’s capabilities against a wide range of design scenarios. For our benchmark to complete successfully, all boards in the test suite must meet or exceed previous benchmarks for:
Here’s a simplified summary of results from our latest benchmark, compared against performance at the time of our Open Beta launch in mid-February:
This benchmark shows significant improvements across routing efficiency and, as a secondary benefit, total job time:
We've entirely rebuilt Quilter's web app with a focus on "reliability" – our ability to consistently set and deliver on our users' expectations for the job they submitted.
In the new app, we've significantly improved the clarity and rigor of our submission workflow to:
In the new app, we've created a much more clearly defined "happy path" that provides tips and information along the way to ensure you get our best results for each job you submit.
The app will also do a better job of keeping you informed as its capabilities improve, so it's always clear over time which jobs you can trust Quilter to tackle.
Because Quilter jobs currently take tens of minutes to hours to produce its first successful candidate, we've invested significantly in improving clarity and transparency into the status of Quilter jobs and design candidates.
In the new app, you'll see significant changes to:
We're excited to announce the launch of Quilter's community forums, a new space for Quilter users to:
If you're interested in learning more about how Quilter works today or where it's headed in the future, our new community forums are the place to be.
To join the community, simply head to https://community.quilter.ai and log in using your existing Quilter account.
We'll see you there!
Quilter's "constraints manager" allows users to identify minimum amperage or trace width requirements for sensitive nets and pins so that Quilter's design agent can route those paths using beefier traces.
What happens, though, when the need for a beefy trace meets a delicate, finely-pitched connector or IC?
Previously, the answer was that Quilter failed to route your design to 100%, leaving you to finish the job it should have completed on its own.
Starting today, the new answer is: success!
As of today, Quilter's design agent can now selectively route "thin-to-thick" traces just like a human designer would, enabling it to complete layout jobs more consistently while obeying all user-defined design rules and constraints.
Early in our closed beta, we started asking users how they felt about the visual aesthetics of Quilter designs. Here's what they told us:
You asked, and we listened!
Quilter now utilizes octilinear trace routing (45 and 135 deg angles) for all generic traces routed by our design agent.
While it's generally a myth that curvy traces are more "manufacturable" than octilinear ones, it's hard to argue that they don't look nicer and perhaps a bit more...human?
Have other ideas for how we could improve our circuit board designs? Let us know by sharing and voting on suggestions in the "Ideas" category of our community forums.
Share ideas for our next feature, improvement, or bug fix with the Quilter team, here.
We’ve launched Constraints Manager, a brand new way for Quilter users to define and manage trace width or amperage constraints for individual net classes, nets, or pins in their design.
Defining constraints ensures Quilter’s AI router will use trace widths that are appropriate for the physical and electrical constraints of the design.
After uploading your board, you can choose to define constraints (in amps or mm/mils), import constraints from a prior design, or continue without defining constraints.
Constraints manager is available today for all designs (KiCAD, Altium, EAGLE).
Quilter users can now upload their schematic along with their board file to Quilter for compilation, enabling components that are directly and implicitly connected in the schematic to be placed together in layout.
More logical component placement should result in easier design comprehension and debugging.
To take advantage of schematic-informed placement, simply upload your root schematic along with your board file using the same name as your board.
This feature is available today for KiCAD designs, with Altium coming soon.
Update: Altium support added in release v0.5.0 (10/11/23).