Flux vs Leo AI: From engineering answers to a complete device.

Leo AI answers engineering questions, runs calculations, and finds parts for your mechanical engineers. Flux does the design work: the AI engineer designs the board, the mechanical parts, and the firmware in one live project.

Flux editor: the AI engineer plans and delegates tasks while the 3D view shows the complete device: enclosure, circuit board, and wiring

What Flux and Leo AI are

What Flux is

Flux is your team's autonomous hardware engineer. Give it a requirement. It plans the design, picks the parts, draws the schematic, routes the board, designs the mechanical parts, and writes the firmware. It checks its own work in simulation and design rule checks, and hands your engineers files ready to manufacture.

What Leo AI is

Leo AI is an AI assistant for mechanical engineers. It answers questions from your PLM data and 1M+ engineering sources, runs calculations, finds parts, and builds assemblies.[1]

Leo AI runs on its own Large Mechanical Model, which is trained on engineering sources, assemblies, and parts that the Leo team curates.[2]

What Leo AI does

Engineering answers

Leo answers practical and theoretical engineering questions, with answers grounded in engineering sources.[3]

Calculations

Leo finds the right formulas and solves them with its built-in code solver, from unit conversions to numerical analysis.[3]

Part search

Leo finds mechanical parts from your PLM and 120M+ vendor parts, by function, by specification, or from an image.[4]

How Flux is different

Leo AI helps your engineers answer questions, calculate, and find parts. Flux does the design work. Describe the product in plain words. The Flux AI engineer writes the requirements, draws the schematic, routes the board, models the enclosure and the mechanical parts around the real board, and writes the firmware. It runs stress, thermal, and airflow simulation, picks parts with live distributor data, and gets quotes from fabricators. Your engineers review and edit everything in one live project.

Close-up of the ESP32 x86 PC board, marked Made with Flux
Real boards and enclosures made with Flux.
Flux compared with Leo AI
Feature Flux Leo AI
Requirements and specification The AI engineer turns your idea into requirements and a product specification, and checks the design against them. Answers questions from your PLM data and engineering sources.[1]
What it is AI hardware engineer with its own design tools AI assistant for mechanical engineers[1]
Where it runs In your web browser. Nothing to install. Your projects live in the cloud. The Leo web app[1]
Who does the design work The Flux agent. Your engineers review and edit. Your engineers design in CAD, with answers and calculations from Leo.[1]
How a part is made You describe the part. The AI engineer writes the parametric model. Your engineers review and edit it. Leo builds assemblies and reuses existing parts.[1]
Mechanical simulation Finite-element stress, thermal, and airflow simulation Engineering calculations, for example stress analysis and material selection[1]
Quotes and orders Quotes and orders for boards, 3D printing, CNC machining, and wire harnesses, from the project. Finds parts across vendors and suppliers.[4]
Team knowledge and rules Written once for the whole organization. Every AI engineer applies it on every project, and Flux checks every design against your rules. Captures the best practices of your organization from CAD and text files.[1]
And electronics as well
Schematic and parts Built in. Picks from 734,000+ public parts. Not in Leo AI[1]
Board layout and routing Built in Not in Leo AI[1]
Parts and sourcing 734,000+ public parts, with live prices and stock from distributors Mechanical parts from your PLM and vendors[4]
Simulation and design rule checks SPICE, electromagnetic, thermal, and mechanical simulation, plus design rule checks No circuit simulation[1]
Firmware Writes firmware for the board it designed Not in Leo AI[1]
Wiring harnesses Built in. Flux designs the wiring harnesses between the boards: connectors, pinouts, and wires, in the same project. Not in Leo AI[1]
Manufacturing files Gerber, ODB++, IPC-2581, bill of materials, pick-and-place, and more No board manufacturing files[1]

Mechanical design, done by the AI engineer.

Parts and assemblies

Flux designs single parts and complete assemblies, from a bracket or an enclosure to a complete robot arm. It brings every part together in one model.

Fits the real board

Flux fits each part to the real board: its mounting holes, connectors, and cutouts. The agent can change the board and the mechanical parts together.

One parts library

Chips and connectors, devices that are not on the board, and mechanical hardware such as screws and standoffs are in one library for the whole product.

Editable CAD code

Flux saves each part as a STEP file and as editable CAD code. Your engineers can review the code and change it.

Bring your CAD work to Flux.

Load your mechanical parts. Tell Flux in plain words how to change them. Then have the parts made.

An engineer holds a relay board in a blue 3D-printed enclosure
Real boards and enclosures made with Flux.

Edits the STEP files your team already has.

The request, as typed in Flux

“The holder must cover a much taller power supply. Make the bent side flange 40 mm deeper. Keep the 4.4 mm hole in the flange where it is. Then cut five 5 x 30 mm vertical vent slots in the new part of the flange, 15 mm apart and centered on the flange width.”

Before: the STEP file from Autodesk Inventor. The bent flange is 24.5 mm deep.
Before: the STEP file from Autodesk Inventor. The bent flange is 24.5 mm deep.
After: the flange is 64.5 mm deep, with five 5 × 30 mm vent slots. The 4.4 mm hole did not move. Flux saves a new STEP file and editable CAD code.
After: the flange is 64.5 mm deep, with five 5 × 30 mm vent slots. The 4.4 mm hole did not move. Flux saves a new STEP file and editable CAD code.

Bring your existing work

Import complete projects, part libraries, and 3D models. Schematics, parts, and placement come across, and routing from most formats.

Keep going with your AI engineer

Imported designs are ready to edit right away. Ask "move the USB cutout 3 cm left" or "make the enclosure tighter", and Flux does the work.

Get it manufactured

Flux hands you the files that your manufacturer needs: Gerber, ODB++, IPC-2581, bill of materials, and pick-and-place for the board, and STEP, STL, or 3MF for the mechanical parts.

See all file formats
Complete projects
Flux imports complete projects from Altium, Cadence OrCAD and Allegro, KiCad, Siemens PADS and Xpedition, Zuken CADSTAR, Eagle, Fusion Electronics, EasyEDA, DipTrace (XML export), and SOLIDWORKS PCB. Schematics, parts, connections, board outlines, and placement come across. Flux imports Labcenter Proteus SDF netlists with Specctra board exports. IPC-2581 revision B and C files become board projects with reusable footprint parts.
Part libraries
Altium, OrCAD, PADS, KiCad, Eagle, Fusion Electronics, EasyEDA, and DipTrace libraries, Allegro footprints, and JEP30 part models become Flux parts.
Mechanical files
STEP, STL, OBJ, 3MF, and glTF models, plus DXF board outlines.
Handoff to manufacturing and electronics tools
Gerber, ODB++, IPC-2581, IPC-D-356 test netlists, bill of materials, pick-and-place, EDIF netlists, GenCAD, and KiCad board files.
Handoff to mechanical design
The full board and its parts as STEP, compressed STEP, BREP, VRML, glTF, and STL models, plus DXF layer drawings. Enclosures and brackets that Flux designs export as STEP, STL, and 3MF, ready for your mechanical tools or a 3D printer.

Kernel-agnostic CAD

Builds every part on the right CAD kernel.

Traditional CAD tools are locked to one geometry kernel, and every part inherits its limits. Flux is kernel agnostic, the same way it is model agnostic. The AI engineer picks the right kernel for each part, switches kernels when one cannot build a feature, and brings every part together in one model.

  • OpenCascade

    Exact, standard geometry that CAM and other CAD tools read cleanly. Strong for machined parts and multi-part assemblies.

  • SMLib

    Smooth, curvature-continuous surfaces for hand-held and consumer products.

  • Parasolid On request

    The kernel inside SolidWorks, NX, Solid Edge, and Onshape, for native-quality exchange with those tools.

Curvature combs on an enclosure in the Flux 3D view
1. Shape the enclosure. NVIDIA SMLib builds the curved edges of the front enclosure. Curvature combs show how each curve bends, so you see where the surface flows and where it breaks.
Cross section through an enclosure and its board in the Flux 3D view
2. Check the board inside. Flux cuts the same enclosure in half. You see the board, the displays and the knob inside, and you check each clearance before you print.

Surface quality you can see. Zebra stripes, curvature maps, and curvature combs show that every surface is smooth before the part goes to tooling.

Verification lab

Simulates and checks its own work before you build.

Flux doesn't stop at generating designs. The AI engineer simulates and checks its own work with professional-grade solvers, and it shows you the results.

Mechanical simulation

Finite-element stress analysis of brackets, enclosures, and mounts.

Thermal simulation

Flux runs PCB thermal analysis of the routed board at stated operating powers, plus heat and airflow simulation of the enclosure, before you build.

Fluid simulation

Airflow and cooling through the enclosure, so vents, fans, and heat sinks work before the first prototype.

Circuit simulation

SPICE simulation of analog, power, and mixed-signal circuits, with Monte Carlo, temperature sweep, and noise analysis, run and read by the AI engineer.

Electromagnetic simulation

Full-wave simulation of the routed board: signal integrity, power integrity, impedance, S-parameters, crosstalk, and antennas.

Design rule checks

Electrical and manufacturing rule checks on every schematic and board.

Datasheet checks

Reads the datasheet of every part and checks the design against its pinouts, ratings, and limits.

SPICE load step of a 3.3 V buck converter
SPICE load step of a 3.3 V buck converter
Thermal map of top and bottom copper
Thermal map of top and bottom copper
Stress analysis of an aluminum bracket
Stress analysis of an aluminum bracket
S-parameters of a USB data line, simulated on the routed board
S-parameters of a USB data line, simulated on the routed board

Manufacturing

Gets quotes from your fabricators as the design changes.

Flux gets quotes directly from the fabricators for circuit boards and assembly, 3D printing in plastic and metal, CNC machining, sheet metal, laser cutting, injection molding, casting, and wiring harnesses. The AI engineer compares price and lead time, checks the design against each fabricator's rules, keeps the quote current as the design changes, and places the order when you confirm.

Mechanical parts

  • Craftcloud Craftcloud
  • JLC 3D printing JLC 3D printing
  • PCBWay 3D printing PCBWay 3D printing
  • Shapeways Shapeways
  • OSH Cut OSH Cut
  • SendCutSend SendCutSend

Circuit boards and assembly

  • JLCPCB JLCPCB
  • PCBWay PCBWay
  • OSH Park OSH Park
  • AISLER AISLER

Cables and wiring harnesses

  • MiniProto MiniProto

Why teams choose an AI hardware engineer

The whole device, not one part

An AI CAD tool makes mechanical parts. Flux designs the board, the mechanical parts, the firmware, and the wire harnesses in one project. It fits each part to the real board: its mounting holes, connectors, and cutouts.

Nothing else to buy

Flux does not need a desktop CAD license to work. The CAD and EDA editor, the parts data, simulation, and manufacturing files are built in and included in your plan. Flux runs in your browser.

Checks its own work

Flux runs stress, thermal, and airflow simulation on the parts that it designs. It runs circuit and electromagnetic simulation and design rule checks on the board.

Gets the parts made

Flux gets quotes for 3D printing, CNC machining, sheet metal, and laser cutting, and for boards and wire harnesses, from the project.

Parts you can buy

Chips, connectors, and mechanical hardware such as screws and standoffs are in one library of 734,000+ public parts, with live prices and stock from distributors.

One live project for the team

Electrical, layout, mechanical, and firmware engineers work in the same live project with the AI engineer. Share a project with a link.

One platform

And the electronics and firmware too.

Flux is not a collection of disconnected CAD applications. It is one AI-native engineering platform where every discipline shares the same project, the same data, and the same AI engineer.

  1. USB-C power input schematic in Flux

    Electrical engineering

    Requirements, part research, schematic capture, and simulation.

  2. Routed board layout of the ESP32 x86 PC in Flux

    PCB layout

    Ask Flux to route a complete board or selected nets. Refine differential pairs, trace lengths, widths, and layers through chat. Placement, stackups, design rule checks, and wire harnesses stay in the same project.

  3. STM32 current-loop firmware that Flux wrote and compiled, in a syntax-highlighted code block

    Firmware

    Firmware for the board Flux designed, for example on Arm Cortex-M, RISC-V, AVR, or Pico, then built, analyzed, and unit tested.

Boards and 3D-printed enclosures made with Flux on a workbench
Real boards and enclosures made with Flux.

Model-agnostic AI

Your favorite AI models. Our engineering superpowers.

Flux pairs frontier AI models with a state-of-the-art agent harness built for CAD and EDA. The models bring reasoning. Flux brings the engineering tools, project context, and workflows that turn that reasoning into working hardware.

  • OpenAI
  • Anthropic
  • Google Gemini
  • More as they ship
Adaptive model selection

Frontier performance at 30% lower cost.

Adaptive splits every engineering job into tasks and gives each task to the model that does it best for the price. Hard design decisions go to frontier models. Routine work goes to fast, low-cost models. Independent tasks run in parallel, so complete devices come together faster. Your team works with one AI engineer, and Flux handles the delegation behind the scenes.

Frontier AI models

  • Reasoning
  • Planning
  • Language

Flux engineering harness

  • CAD and EDA tools
  • Project context
  • Simulation
  • Design rules

Working hardware

  • Schematics
  • Boards
  • Enclosures
  • Firmware
  • Fab files
  • Product videos

Every frontier model, one platform

Work with the frontier models your team already trusts, inside Flux.

Engineering superpowers built in

Every model gets Flux's specialized engineering tools, project context, and workflows.

Upgrade without migrating

When a better model ships, your team gets it without switching engineering platforms.

No single-vendor lock-in

Avoid depending on any one model provider for your engineering capacity.

The right model for every step

Adaptive matches each engineering step to the model that does it best, from deep design decisions to routine checks.

Your designs stay yours.

  • SOC 2-aligned cloud infrastructure
  • Single sign-on (SSO)
  • Project-level permissions
  • Inputs and outputs are always your IP
  • No training on customer data

Flux pricing

  • Explore

    See current pricing

    Trial terms depend on your current offer.

  • Build

    See current pricing

    Trial terms depend on your current offer.

  • Pro

    See current pricing

    Trial terms depend on your current offer.

  • Teams

    See current pricing

    Teams subscriptions start paid.

Eligible individual plans include a free trial. Teams subscriptions start paid; trial and pricing terms depend on your current offer. See all plans

When to use which

Use Leo AI when your mechanical engineers want answers, calculations, and part search next to their CAD tool. Choose Flux when you want an AI engineer to design the board, the mechanical parts, and the firmware, ready for manufacturing.

Questions

Give Flux your next requirement.

Explore individual plan offers, or book a demo with our team.

Sources

  1. Leo AI: https://www.getleo.ai/
  2. Leo AI security: https://www.getleo.ai/security
  3. Leo AI engineering chat: https://www.getleo.ai/leo-chat
  4. Leo AI part retrieval: https://www.getleo.ai/part-retrieval