Hello Everyone,
I'm seeing what software everyone is using. I get drawings from General Contracts that don't usually have electrical layout drawings. I take it upon myself to create drawings. The issue is that I don't have a program to do so. I just use PDF Reader and use the comment section of that.
I would like to make some more professional drawings now that the company is getting bigger with some higher quality customers.
At one end of the spectrum we have true drafting software that basically automated lines on paper. The cheapest is Sketchup which is free. Micro station, Draftsight, and Turbocad fall somewhere in between. Autocad leads the way in price but not features. Key to using these is it makes a nice grid, keeps all your lines straight and neat, and most importantly lets you group things to create objects such as “buttons” and using lots of templates since once you draw one push button, you don’t need to repeat it. I would estimate around 50-80% of shops do things this way. There is a BIG learning curve. This isn’t like using a paint program. Hence starting with say Sketchup to learn then upgrading once you understand may be the best.
But there is a key difference with electrical drawings. Most electrical drawings are really more of an illustration. It is not drawn to scale. I can’t use it to measure if 1 inch equals one foot, THIS is what CAD and drafting is all about…precision drawings. You are “building” in software. A schematic is not to scale. So all the power of drafting software is totally lost in electrical drawings. A conduit schedule may give a diameter if you are lucky. Often it’s just a cable schedule. Only really panel layouts are true technical drawings that are dimensioned. And even if there is a drawing electrical contractors often don’t follow it.
Beyond this electrical “drafting” can go in many directions. For instance in Autocad Electrical the heart of the system is s bill of materials. You do schematics first. Then you can lay out the parts in a panel construction print. Additional drawings are wiring lists for panel builders, panel button layouts, and conduit schedules. You also have full Autocad underneath. The learning curve here is even steeper but this stuff is oriented towards panel shops. If that’s not you, it can still be useful but the price for having all that is high. You can find electrical symbol templates to download for free.
Another extreme is electrical modeling software. Staying within the drafting side we have Ansys that can do electromagnetic simulations useful for say designing cell phones or PSCad useful for designing power distribution systems. Spice and even more powerful EMTP does high end electrical simulation of circuits but the “schematics” are really just a convenient way to feed data into the software. I would never use those drawings in prints. This stuff is very specialized, not something you want to use fair drawings. The closest I’ve seen is using say ETap drawings to show power system single lines.
The other side of the world is programs like Krita. Ok so this is a paint program and a related (vector based) one is Inkscape but hear me out. Remember we are mostly interested in illustrations. So if mostly you are taking a scan or PDF and simply painting/drawing on top of it, this may be a far better option than dealing with fussy drafting software. Anyone who has ever tried to import a line drawing into one of those converters and edit the drawing after that knows that the experience in trying to make nice straight even looking lines is more time consuming than just starting over. Hence programs meant for painting aren’t really that bad if that’s your goal.
With any of these options the learning curve is STEEP. You can drop a line on a page in a couple minutes if playing with it. But to get efficient at doing drawings is usually a one semester college or high school class.
With Autocad by the way they’ve been around since the 1970s. They have the highest prices. Their software was around before even the Mac and Windows systems existed do the way they do things is not intuitive if you are used to 99% of the software out there. Don’t expect the most basic things like drag-and-drop or copy/paste to work as expected. In fact the mouse is for pointing and selecting. Autocad Pros do most things with the keyboard using commands that have been around for 40 years. They probably could make it work more like the rest of the world but they would be severely rebuked in the entire drafting industry since the only way to do it breaks the old ways. They have done some and it is close to the Windows/Mac way but not identical and never will be. Some of this legacy stuff though is terrible. Printing in autocad was created when print shops asked if you want your prints in limestone or sandstone. It is horrible. And their default yellow color is practically invisible.
The other big thing with Autocad is file formats. At one time they were moving towards a universally common file format. But that gave competitors a foothold. So now Autocad uses an “open” format essentially if you put a single straight line on a page with no formatting. Everything else is hidden inside heavily encrypted blocks of data guaranteeing incompatibility. So they try to trap everyone inside the Autocad ecosystem. Plus every version purposely breaks ALL previous versions, forcing you to spend thousands every year buying the latest version. So customers may insist on Autocad files but it’s not a once and done thing. Plus they ship software with purposely pathetic, useless demo libraries and force you into expensive subscriptions if you use anything but “vanilla cad”. Autocad continuously does everything possible to extract money. So if you can avoid it, do so.
