hive-pcb-flow (Hive-RSI-Lab) errors

11 recurring problems engineers report in hive-pcb-flow (Hive-RSI-Lab), ranked by impact.

#38 by errors trackedECAD

Recurring hive-pcb-flow (Hive-RSI-Lab) errors, by impact

  1. 1A PCB flow found KiCad's 0.25 mm copper-to-hole default silently standing in for the fab's value, and a hand-made stackup draft with stripline widths off by about 10%. The generated 6-layer stripline widths are 0.1841, 0.1616 and 0.1177 mm against a hand draft of 0.165, 0.1484 and 0.1085, and the fab's minimum via left a ring thinner than its own floor.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report74
  2. 2An agent PCB flow cannot instance one schematic sheet N times, so repeated channels get copied by hand and drift. On a hifi receiver the left and right amps were generated as separate files with their own ref ranges: only 25 of 44 parts pair up by ref suffix, 8 of those pairs have different footprints, and 17 and 19 parts have no counterpart at all.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report74
  3. 3A KiCad point release turned a clean USB-C footprint into four DRC errors with no way to waive them. Fixtures recorded clean on 10.0.3 fail on 10.0.6: hole clearance on J1 is 0.18 mm on GND and 0.21 mm on VBUS against a 0.25 mm default.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  4. 4A schematic library writes every hierarchical label as an input, whatever it was told, and KiCad lists multi-unit parts in page order, so netlist compares break after a redraw. Found on a board with dual op-amps and split MCU symbols: each placed unit was measured as the whole symbol, so bodies and pin bands were overstated.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  5. 5An agent PCB flow moved lessons out of one team's private notes into the files its agents read. Board setup ignores the project footprint library table, a scratch copy loses custom design rules on refill, hand-added parts drift on the LCSC field and leave a stale position CSV, a USB-C connector has 0.1 mm pad polygon gaps, and one 50/60-pin connector symbol clashes.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  6. 6An unlisted 48 V net defaults to 0 V in the creepage check. A code survey found more silent passes after an earlier fix covered 15 checks: rails with no known voltage only count the pin, current, thermal and return-path checks go quiet when their constraints block is empty, and unknown connectors skip the keying rule.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  7. 7Board lessons that never made it into docs, recorded so agents can use them. EasyEDA footprints for 12.5 mm electrolytic cans with a courtyard round the leads only (7 x 2 mm), two pulled SOIC-16W footprints with lands 7.1 mm and 8.08 mm apart, a board library named 'power' shadowing KiCad's power symbols, and DFN die pads on copper with no paste or mask.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  8. 8Datasheet extractions were found only by LCSC part number, so a board ordered from another fab came up with empty IC slots. When the LCSC lookup finds nothing it now tries the manufacturer part number. The same PR fixes a lint that said 'unknown key si, did you mean si?' because the schema and the walker kept two key lists.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  9. 9Importing an Eagle schematic into KiCad retyped power pins and broke ERC's rail model. On a SparkFun Pro Micro RP2040 import, GND, 3.3V and PWR_FLAG became passive, and the RP2040's supply pins stayed passive too. The workaround today is a board-local fix_sch.py script.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  10. 10Pin and ratings checks matched by pin number or name and flagged four parts that were actually correct. An Everlight optical receiver had symbol and footprint both renumbered and mirrored, so the copper was right but a number-to-number join read 'Vout on VCC.' Eight suspected defects were each cleared by reading the maker's datasheet.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  11. 11The DFM gate accepts a waiver, the attestation step ignores it, and the two disagree about the same board. A Wurth inductor has no EasyEDA model, so the 3D placement check can never run; the gate reports pass with 8 waived while attest reports 8 failing after waivers because it only reads a different waiver file.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66

How it fails

  1. Agent failure11

Sourced from public community reports. Costs and delays on individual entries are modeled estimates, not measurements.