First bloom
In development
Calyx
Get from a finished board design to the 3D model everyone downstream is waiting for.
In botany, the calyx encloses and protects the flower. Calyx turns Gerber, NC-drill, pick-and-place and BOM files into a populated-board 3D STEP assembly and interactive GLB view.
The workflow
The files you already send your manufacturer, in. A board you can build around, out.
Today somebody opens mechanical CAD and places per-component STEP models by hand — sourcing them from vendors where they exist, approximating them where they do not — then repeats a meaningful part of that work on every board revision.
In
Nothing new has to be produced to start.
Gerber
Copper, mask and silkscreen layers.
NC drill
Hole sizes and positions.
Pick-and-place
Reference designators, positions, rotations, side.
BOM
Manufacturer part numbers and quantities.
Native ECAD exports — PADS ASCII, KiCad, IPC-2581 — are accepted as optional higher-fidelity inputs. Any EDA tool works, because the manufacturing set is the common denominator between all of them.
Out
The board as geometry, not as layers.
Populated-board 3D STEP assembly
The populated board, with every component placed and oriented.
Interactive GLB view
Turn the populated-board assembly in the browser before downloading it.
Separate enclosure base and lid
STEP/STL outputs for engineer review. Calyx does not produce an assembly STL.
Pilot enclosure outputs
In developmentSeparate base and lid STEP/STL outputs are included in the pilot. Calyx does not produce an assembly STL. Assemblies, enclosures, clearances and reports are preliminary engineering aids that require engineer verification; they are not manufacturing or safety certification.
How it earns trust
The parts that would be easy to fake, and are not.
An engineer cannot use a dimension they cannot check. These three properties are what make the output something to verify rather than something to believe.
- 01
The AI never emits geometry
Models return validated parameters — numbers and nothing else — which deterministic generators turn into shapes. If a parameter fails validation the job fails visibly instead of coercing to something plausible. The same files build the same bytes: a test constructs a board cold twice and compares the results hash for hash.
- 02
Every inferred number carries its source and its score
A dimension read out of a datasheet records which page it came from and how confident the reading was. Low confidence does not quietly become a fact — it routes to a human review queue, which is a person's decision rather than a silent default.
- 03
It tells you when it does not know
A dimensional guardrail runs on every part that gets built, and its rule is the sharpest line the product has: distrusted, never clamped. A 50.2 mm quietly corrected to 25 mm is still a fabricated dimension wearing a measured confidence. A number it cannot stand behind is marked as one, not quietly rounded into the model.
Components that collide are found, not left to be discovered
Interpenetration checking runs over the assembled board and reports the pairs that overlap. It is the first moment the design exists as an object, which is the first moment that question can be asked at all.
You see what it resolved before you spend anything on it
Calyx reports how every part on the board resolved — and how confidently — before the build runs, not after. Nothing about the answer is a surprise you pay for first.
Who it is for
Two roles, one handoff — and the handoff is the product.
The PCB designer verifies
Do components collide? Does anything overlap or conflict? Are the heights and clearances real? This is a verification job, and until the board is an object there is nothing to verify against.
The mechanical engineer designs
They review the assembly and preliminary enclosure, check dimensions and clearances, and take the design through manufacturing and safety decisions.
Both team shapes, honestly
With a mechanical engineer
Calyx does the model assembly and the first pass. The engineer keeps the design judgement and takes it further — which means every generated dimension has to be visibly editable, or an engineer will not trust it.
Without one
Calyx provides a preliminary enclosure starting point the team otherwise does not have — without pretending to a confidence it has not earned.
What stays yours
Every number is overridable
Drop in your own STEP for a part Calyx got wrong, or correct the dimensions it inferred. The correction is attached to the part rather than to one run, so it survives the next regeneration instead of having to be redone.
A model you upload never leaves your organisation
There is no path that contributes it to a shared library — not by omission, but because there was never going to be one. What you upload is your engineering and it stays your property: held against your organisation alone, and never served to another customer.
Calyx does not replace a mechanical engineer, Calyx supports.
Bring it a board.
Upload the manufacturing files from your last revision and see the assembly come back.