Resources

PCB Design Review

Practical, engineer-first writing on PCB design review — what the automated checks miss, how to give every reviewer the board, and the data and tooling that make a review hold up.

Design review is where a board’s real correctness gets decided — and it’s the step most likely to be rushed, under-tooled, or skipped. This collection covers PCB design review from the questions the rule checks can’t answer to the formats and workflow that let a whole team review a board instead of just looking at it. Each guide stands on its own; together they make one argument. Most of it rests on the neutral ODB++ export you already produce for fabrication.

Start here · pillar Why ERC and DRC Are Not Enough A clean ERC and DRC prove a board is legal — not that it’s right. The class of functional errors every rule check passes, and why the review still matters. Read the pillar →

The PCB design review series

Four guides build on the pillar — from who can open the board, to the checklist you work it against, to the AI and the file format behind a review you can trust.

Access How to Review a PCB Design Without a CAD License Seeing the board is solved. The gap is a board you can question — and findings that persist. Read → Checklist PCB Design Review Checklist (2026 Edition) A practical, printable checklist — power, connectivity, components, layout, manufacturing and docs. Read → AI AI for PCB Design Review: Make It Prove It The danger isn’t that AI is wrong — it’s that you can’t see when. Ground every answer, and refuse the ones it can’t prove. Read → Data formats ODB++ vs Gerber for Design Reviews Gerber is an excellent manufacturing format and a poor review format. What each carries, and when it matters. Read →

These ideas, in a tool

Probe is the design-review traceability layer these guides describe — every finding linked to the netlist, layout and datasheet data, opened by any reviewer, no CAD license required.

See Probe