An AI tool can hand you a placed and routed board in minutes. The useful question isn't whether it looks right. It's which parts of it were decided by a language model and which were computed, because those two kinds of output fail in different ways and need different checks.
This is the system card for PCBEditor, which turns a plain-English description into a placed, routed, design-rule-checked PCB with standard fabrication files. It explains how the work is split between the model and the deterministic engines, what that means for what you should check, and ends with a checklist to run before you send a board to a fab. PCBEditor is a hosted application, so no model weights come with this card.
The 3D view: the board as an assembly, with the parts' 3D models in place.
PCBEditor splits the job in two:
What this means for your review: put your attention on the model's decisions, the parts and the connections. Mistakes there look plausible on screen: a wrong pinout or a missing pull-up resistor passes every geometric check. The geometry is computed, so check it with tools rather than by eye.
The model stage can return a different draft on a different run, and certainly on a different model version. The layout stage doesn't: the same netlist and the same rules give the same board. A review you did yesterday still describes the board you have today, even if the model behind stage one has been updated.
What this means for your review: once you have checked a schematic, keep it and build from it. Generating again from the same prompt gives you a new draft, and a new draft needs a new review.
The output is standard fabrication data: Gerber (RS-274X), Excellon drill, pick-and-place and BOM, plus a native KiCad .kicad_pcb file. That means you can check it with software you already trust:
.kicad_pcb file in KiCad and run its design-rule check with your fab's rules.
A result you can only verify inside the vendor's own tool isn't verified.
The routing view: copper on each layer in its own colour, with vias and pads.
When a board can't be fully routed, PCBEditor names the specific nets it couldn't complete instead of reporting a completion percentage. A figure like "94% routed" hides which connections are missing; a list of net names tells you exactly where to look.
What to do with it: most unroutable boards are placement problems. Move the parts at the ends of the named nets, give dense parts more room around them, and route again.
The exploded stackup: layers pulled apart so traces and vias can be inspected layer by layer.
PCBEditor is built for prototyping, learning and small-to-moderate board designs, particularly where no desktop CAD is available: a Chromebook, a tablet or a locked-down machine. It is not a replacement for a professional EDA suite on complex production hardware, and it is not a replacement for engineering review.
Designs are processed on PCBEditor's servers. Prompts and design intent are sent to a hosted model provider as part of generation. Footprint and symbol data come from the KiCad libraries, which the KiCad project licenses under CC-BY-SA-4.0. The privacy policy has the details.
Originally published as PCBEditor's system card on Hugging Face.