If you've ever handed a board to an autorouter and watched it choke, the problem probably wasn't the autorouter. Autorouting gets most of the attention in automated PCB design, but routing is one of the last steps in the process. By the time it runs, all your earlier layout decisions have already locked in the outcome. A poorly placed board will defeat even the best autorouter every time.
We ran into this ourselves. Tovan's agent designs PCBs, and we first tried solving the problem by pairing a strong autorouter (Alpharouter) with an agent that could move components freely. That created a long loop: place components, attempt to route, fail, move components, try again. It worked, but it was slow, expensive in tokens, and not a great experience for anyone waiting on a board.
So for the past six weeks we've been building something different: Layout Engine, a deterministic algorithm the agent now calls on to lay out a board in a fraction of the time it used to take by trial and error.
Layout Engine accounts for how components interconnect, where decoupling capacitors need to sit, how many traces need to pass through a given corridor, what has to stay on the board's edge (like connectors), and even user preferences for specific part placement. The agent hands it a board, and it places components for the best possible routing outcome before routing ever starts.
The payoff: layout now happens in seconds to minutes instead of many agent iterations, it doesn't draw down usage limits the way agent-managed layout did, and boards that are laid out well give the autorouter a real shot at succeeding on the first pass.
Before Layout Engine
After Layout Engine
Layout Engine is live now. Every board Tovan's agent builds for you gets the benefit automatically, no extra steps on your end.
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