EDA & CAD tools
Product design & engineering
599 episodes across 36 shows cover EDA & CAD tools. The shows that cover it most are The Amp Hour, Embedded.fm and Making It. The most recent, from 9 Oct 2026, is “Ep 390: DOOM, Cranium Stuff, and Odd OpenSCAD Opportunities” from Hackaday Podcast.
The software used to design products: KiCad, Altium, Fusion, SolidWorks, Onshape, simulation tools, PLM/PDM, and choosing or switching between them.
599 episodes from 36 shows, most relevant and most recent first.
599 episodes
AI PCB Design: Turning a 100-Page Spec Into an MCU Shortlist
Marco Witzmann, Head of Requirements Portal at Altium, demonstrates the new AI-powered engineering assistant within the Altium Requirements Portal, formerly known as Requirements Manager. He walks through a live demo of converting a…
Altium Is Coming Home to the Designer | Lawrence Romine on OnTrack
Lawrence Romine, senior director of marketing at Altium, explains the company's strategic pivot from a single-product model to three distinct offerings: Altium Develop, Teams, and Enterprise. He details how Altium Develop targets…
Altium API Deep Dive: Opening PCB Data to Developers
Rob Barton, Head of Platform API at Altium, explains the evolution of Altium's programmatic access from disconnected SDKs to the new Platform API, a federated GraphQL schema exposing design data, supply chain intelligence, and…
Calibre Directions in Artificial Intelligence
Carrie Robertson, Vice President of Product Management at Siemens EDA, explains how the company integrates AI into its Calibre design verification suite. She distinguishes between the deterministic algorithms used for sign-off quality and…
Automated Multiphysics for 3D IC Success
Chevanoki and John Ferguson from Siemens EDA discuss the challenges of automated multiphysics analysis for 3D IC design, specifically how power, heat, and stress interact in stacked heterogeneous architectures. They explain the shift from…
T-25-010 : Ioannis Papamanoglou and Narayan Powderly - Engineers transforming how we design, test, and build hardware with atopile
Narayan Powderly and Ioannis Papamanoglou, co-CEOs of atopile, discuss their command-line circuit design tool that brings software development practices to hardware engineering. They explain how their frustration with slow board…
S3 E1: Mastering Tech Adoption and The Hardware Development Workflow with Jon Hirshtick
Jon Hirshtick, founder of SolidWorks and Onshape, discusses the evolution of hardware development tools, emphasizing that software is a tool rather than a solution. He explains how customer visits and inferring needs drove the creation of…
Accelerating Complex Analog IC Design: The Power of Early Reliability Verification
Matthew Hogan, Product Management Director at Siemens Digital Industry Software, explains how Insight Analyzer enables 'shift-left' reliability verification for complex analog and mixed-signal IC designs. He details how the tool performs…
S7E21 Rod Scholl | Pro Tips from 30-Year Analyst For Accurate Simulations (FEA & CFD)
Rod Scholl, founder of Epsilon FEA, discusses the critical role of engineering judgment in Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), contrasting his early career at Honeywell and PADT with his current consulting…
Implicit Design, AI & Next Gen Design Tools: Inside nTop’s Bold New Design Frontier
Brad Rothenberg, CEO and founder of nTop (formerly nTopology), discusses the evolution of his company from a tool for additive manufacturing component design to a platform for implicit modeling and system-level engineering. He explains how…
Code-Based PCB Design with AI: Inside atopile
Ioannis Papamanoglou and Narayan Powderly, co-founders of atopile, explain their code-based, AI-driven approach to PCB design, arguing that hardware has lagged behind software in tooling automation. They discuss how capturing engineering…
Altium File Parsing, AI Design Reviews & PCB Viz Tools
Eli Hughes, principal at Wavenumber LLC, demonstrates his open-source 'Altium Cruncher' toolset, which parses Altium project files to generate BOMs, net lists, and 3D HTML viewers without opening the CAD software. He explains how he feeds…
Altium Requirements Portal: Simplifying Engineering Docs
Marco Witzmann, Head of Requirements Portal at Altium, explains how the Requirements Portal integrates with Altium Develop to solve engineering documentation chaos. He details the tool's ability to manage complex requirements, trace them…
S6E15 Too Tall Toby | CAD Best Practices, Speed Modeling, & Gamification
Toby Schnaars, founder of TooTallToby, explains how he gamifies 3D CAD learning through speed modeling tournaments and community challenges to help engineers master tools like SolidWorks, Onshape, and Fusion 360. He argues that speed…
Beyond Automation: Self-Verifying AI Agents for Semiconductor and PCB Design
Amit Gupta, Chief AI Strategy Officer at Siemens EDA, and Tim Costa, VP and GM of Industrial and Computational Engineering at NVIDIA, discuss their collaboration to build self-verifying AI agents for semiconductor and PCB design. They…
S5E52 Jon Hirschtick | Founding & Developing the Solidworks and Onshape CAD Systems
Jon Hirschtick, founder of SolidWorks and Onshape, explains how he used winnings from the MIT Blackjack Team to fund SolidWorks' early days and overcame investor skepticism by targeting the Windows PC market with a 3D CAD tool. He details…
The Benefits of Model-Based Engineering w/ Henrik Hulgaard
Henrik Hulgaard, co-founder and VP of Product Management at Configit, explains how model-based engineering and product configuration software help manufacturers align sales and engineering processes. He details how creating a logical…
Chip Design for Fun (and Waffles) with Julia Desmazes
Julia Desmazes, a CPU and RTL designer, discusses her experience building custom ASICs for fun through the Tiny Tape Out program, including a recent 'two weeks until tape out' challenge. She explains the open-source silicon stack…
S5E51 Manish Kumar | Being CEO at SOLIDWORKS
Manish Kumar, CEO of SOLIDWORKS and VP of R&D at Dassault Systèmes, discusses the evolution of the company from its 1995 launch to its current cloud-based 3DEXPERIENCE platform. He details the development of X Design, a browser-native CAD…
A Shift Left Strategy Addresses IC Design Challenges Through Design-Stage Verification
David Abercrombie, Product Management Director at Siemens EDA, explains how the company applies 'shift left' strategies to its Caliber verification suite to improve productivity and design quality. He details specific tools like Caliber…
Altium Develop: Returning to Our Roots
Lawrence Romine, a 20-year veteran at Altium, explains the launch of Altium Develop, a new product offering designed to return the company to its roots of serving individual engineers and small teams. He contrasts this with the…
From Block Diagram to Schematic in Minutes
Tomide Adesanmi, CEO and co-founder of Circuit Mind, explains how their AI platform automates the conversion of block diagrams into functional schematics, BOMs, and analysis documents. He details the platform's evolution from digital and…
PCB Design Tools for Every Team Size: Altium's New Approach
Justin Sears, Head of Product Marketing for SaaS at Altium, explains the company's new product strategy announced at PCB West 2025. He details the split between Altium Develop for small teams and Altium Agile for larger organizations…
The State of Multi-Die: Insights and Customer Requirements
Shaker Kapur, Executive Director of Productline Management for the Synopsys EDA Group, discusses the industry shift toward multi-die design driven by the strategic collaboration between OpenAI and AMD. He explains how this partnership…
Can AI Design IoT Hardware? | Flux's Matthias Wagner | Internet of Things Podcast
Matthias Wagner, Founder and CEO of Flux, explains how his company uses agentic AI to democratize PCB design, allowing non-engineers to create hardware via natural language prompts. He discusses the historical bottlenecks of hardware…
S5E39 Bradley Rothenberg | nTopology (nTop) & Computational Design
Bradley Rothenberg, founder and CEO of nTopology (now branded nTop), explains how their computational design software captures engineering requirements in algorithms rather than traditional geometry definitions. He details the use of…
S5E38 Istvan Csanady | Shapr3D
Istvan Csanady, founder and CEO of Shapr3D, explains how his company is reinventing CAD by focusing on mobility, ease of use, and native application support on iPad, Mac, Windows, and Apple Vision Pro. He details the company's strategy of…
How AI is Changing Every Aspect of EDA
Satish Kumar Balasubrahmanian, who leads product management for custom IC verification at Siemens EDA, explains how the company applies 'Verifiable AI' to accelerate semiconductor design and verification. He details the evolution from…
QSPICE Circuit Simulation: A Spicy Discussion with Mike Engelhardt
Mike Engelhardt, creator of LTspice and now QSPICE at Qorvo, explains how he built circuit simulation tools starting from his work in physics labs and oil exploration. He details the rapid development of LTspice in 10 months to serve as…
Trust at Scale: The Next Challenge for AI-Driven Semiconductor Development
Dr. Jim Shiely, Chief of Staff for Calibre Semiconductor R&D at Siemens EDA, discusses the 'trust bottleneck' emerging in semiconductor development as AI becomes embedded in engineering workflows. He explains that while AI accelerates…
AI-Powered PLM: The Future of Hardware Product Lifecycle Management
Michael Corr, CEO and founder of Duro, explains how his cloud-based PLM platform simplifies hardware product lifecycle management by centralizing bill of materials (BOM) data and integrating with supply chain APIs like Octopart and Nexar…
The Signal Integrity Tool Every Engineer Is Missing
David Banas, a Solutions Engineer at Keysight, discusses three open-source Python packages—PyBERT, PyIBIS-AMI, and PyChopMarge—that provide accessible alternatives to expensive commercial signal integrity simulation tools. He demonstrates…
Solving PCB Library Nightmares with Kristen Aguiar
Kristen Aguiar, a Training Developer at Altium, discusses the persistent challenges of managing PCB component libraries, categorizing the issues into data quality, process failures, and the 'people problem' of adoption. She argues that…
Episode 67: A Conversation with Aart de Geus on EDA and the Future of Silicon Design
Aart de Geus, co-founder and executive chair of Synopsys, discusses the evolution of electronic design automation (EDA) and the future of silicon design. He explains how the industry shifted from analog to digital design, enabling the…
Building wafer.space with Tim Ansell
Tim Ansell, founder of wafer.space, discusses his new Singapore-based service that provides access to GlobalFoundries' GF180 MCU process for open-source silicon design, following the collapse of eFabless. He explains how wafer.space aims…
Freeing EEs to Design Like Tony Stark
Tomide Adesanmi, co-founder and CEO of Circuit Mind, explains how his background designing head-worn displays for fighter pilots at BAE Systems revealed the inefficiencies of manual schematic design. He founded Circuit Mind to replace…
Solving the Hard Problems: Combining AI and Physics for PCB Design
Sergiy Nesterenko, founder and CEO of Quilter, explains how his company uses reinforcement learning and computational physics to automate PCB layout, aiming to create a 'compiler' for electronics that handles the entire design scope. He…
Making Analog Chip Designs Without Analog Designers
Dr. Jennifer Hasler of Georgia Tech discusses her work on Field Programmable Analog Arrays (FPAAs) and new Python-based analog synthesis tools designed to make analog chip design accessible to non-analog experts. She explains how…
Ep. 12 - Improving FreeCAD ft. Brad Collette from Ondsel
Brad Collette, cofounder and CTO of Ondsel, explains how his company uses an open-core model to fund and improve the open-source CAD software FreeCAD. He details the technical challenges of solving the topological naming problem and…
Silicon Revolution with Matt Venn
Matt Venn, founder of Tiny Tapeout and Zero to Asic, explains how Tiny Tapeout democratizes chip design by subdividing multi-project wafers (MPWs) from eFabless into affordable, small slots for hobbyists and students. He details the…
Inside Simberian's AI-Driven Design Automation
Yuriy Shlepnev, founder of Simberian, discusses the integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into signal integrity (SI) workflows via Simbeor Commander. He contrasts this agentic approach with previous machine learning attempts that…
Simplifying BOM Management with Intelligent Platforms
Nemanja Jokanovic, VP and General Manager at Breadboard, explains how his platform automates Bill of Materials (BOM) management to bridge the gap between design engineers and procurement professionals. He details features including…
CELUS: Simplifying Circuit Design with AI
Mohammad Matin, Technical Sales Solution Architect at CELUS, explains how the company uses AI to streamline circuit design by generating block diagrams and schematics from manufacturer reference designs. He details how CELUS breaks down…
163. Creating 3D Objects With AI
Hosts Daniel and Forbode discuss 'AnythingXYZ', an AI tool by Poly Spectra that generates 3D CAD models from text prompts. They explore the technical challenges of training AI on scarce CAD data and the decision to use the open-source…
Inside a Multi-$Billion IP Engine Driving IC and EDA Innovations
John Koeter, Senior Vice President of IP at Synopsys, discusses the evolution of semiconductor intellectual property, the shift to multi-die chiplet architectures, and the transformative role of AI in chip design. He details Synopsys'…
Intelligent Routing with Sergiy Nesterenko
Sergiy Nesterenko, CEO of Quilter.ai, explains how his company uses generative AI and parallel cloud compute to automate PCB layout from schematics. He discusses the company's pivot from hardware sensors to software, drawing on his…
VC-Backed Hardware Design Collaboration is the (All) Spice of Life
Valentina Ratner and Kyle Dumont, co-founders of Allspice, explain their mission to bring Git-style version control and collaboration workflows to hardware engineering, addressing the industry's reliance on outdated methods like printed…
S5E50 Roopinder Tara | Timing, FEA, & the Beginning of CAD
Roopinder Tara, Editor in Chief at EngTechnica and former professor, discusses his journey from mechanical engineering to technical journalism and the evolution of CAD technology. He details the high costs and limited productivity gains of…
Jon Hirschtick | Founding & Developing the Solidworks and Onshape CAD Systems
Jon Hirschtick, founder of SolidWorks and Onshape, and current Chief Evangelist at PTC, explains how he used personal funds from his time as a professional blackjack player to launch SolidWorks in 1993, targeting the gap between expensive…
S7E16 Chad Walters | Constraints, Iteration, & Industrial Design in Product Development
Chad Walters, an industrial design leader with experience at companies like APR, LLC and Viking Range, LLC, discusses the role of industrial designers in product development, emphasizing user research, storytelling, and collaboration with…