PCB review before you order

Catch the dead-on-arrival mistakes first

Your AI reviews your schematic and layout the way a senior hardware engineer would before fabrication: power and decoupling, footprints and polarity, routing, manufacturability, test points and the order itself, ranked by what costs most after the boards arrive.

By Vander Labs. A Vander Labs Original, written by the Vander Labs team with AI assistance. Works with Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and Claude Code.

What your AI learns

• Walks power, decoupling and grounding before anything cosmetic
• Checks footprints, polarity, USB-C CC resistors and antenna keepouts
• Compares the design against the board house limits and the order files

How it works

1. Power first: Traces every rail from input protection to each load, checks regulator capacitors, thermal budget and supply pins.
2. Decoupling and ground: 100 nF per supply pin within 3 mm with a nearby via, bulk capacitors per rail, unbroken ground pours.
3. Schematic connectivity: Pull-ups on I2C, reset and strapping pins, LED resistors, crystal load caps, every ERC warning read.
4. Footprints and polarity: Land patterns against datasheets, pin 1 marks, polarity marks, connector pinouts and USB-C CC resistors.
5. Routing: Trace widths from current, short power paths, crystal and antenna keepouts, USB as a pair, no acid traps.
6. Manufacturability: Trace and space, drill, mask slivers, silkscreen off pads, edge clearance, fiducials for assembly.
7. Debuggability: Debug header, test points on rails and key signals, status LED, board name and revision on silkscreen.
8. Order check: Gerbers, drill and outline present, thickness, copper weight, finish, and BOM and placement files matching the layout.

Limits and safety

• Scope is two- and four-layer boards up to USB 2.0 speeds; flags high-speed differential and bare-chip RF as needing a specialist.
• Anything carrying mains voltage is out of scope and said so.

Topics: pcb, kicad, dfm, schematic, review