Electrical Drawing Software - low-cost recommendations

[EastAnglian]

What do you guys use to draw up your installations and plans I wonder?

I know that I can spend lots of ££££ on A-CAD and other such wonders, but my budget and my work-load don't justify the expense.

I'm interested in a low-cost drawing package which has an up-to-date UK symbol library and is relatively easy to use.

Malcolm

 

[Amp David]

Wondered this in the past too.

Another program that i'd like to know exists is one for planning lighting, especially the number of downlight, then you can give your customers a proper plan, before committing to saying fit this many or that many

 

[malcolmsanford]

Visio can be quite a decent tool for very small drawings

 

[EastAnglian]

I may have an answer to my own question here! Visio is quite expensive, but this program appears to do much the same job:

Dia - GNOME Live!

Its an open-source program, so no cost.

I've not investigated yet how easy it is to draw your own symbols as I don't seem to be able to find any UK standard ones in the libraries, but its early days

 

[Knobhead]

Please let us know how you fair with it.

I’m getting fed up with package I use, it takes ages to produce a drawing all be it very fine detailed if needed. I use Auto-Sketch, it’s from the days of Windows 3.11, so it’s a bit long in the tooth but it can produce Auto-Cad compatible drawings.

 

[Marvo]

For standard 2 dimensional sketches I find Visio the quickest and easiest. It also can save the drawings to CAD formats, jpg, gif, pdf etc etc. Being shapes based saves a lot of time when you're using the same components or symbols time after time, you just drag and drop them from a shape template.

It's limiting factors are that it doesn't support 3D or layers like AutoCAD. Visio also comes bundled with certain versions of M1cr0soft Office.

For more complex drawings I use AutoCAD, Catia / Solid Works for CAM/CNC compatibility. All these packages are priced outside the occasional user bracket except possibly AutoCAD Lite which is heavily crippled.

Here's some freeware suggestions. I haven't tried any of them so I can't comment.

 

[nickjohn]

Would you not be able to do basic floor plans in Google Sketchup and then insert lines to show wiring runs etc..

 

[Marvo]

You can make scale wireframe drawings in sketchup but unless you pay for the full version you can only save the drawings in the proprietary Sketckup file format. The only program that can handle this format is sketchup and google earth. Sketchup has limited capability for wireframe sketches but would be usable for concept drawings to give the customer an idea of a finished install at a push.

 

[nickjohn]

Hi Marvo, I have an old copy of Sketchup 7 and it has the facility to export the proprietary 2d image as a jpeg, not sure if the newer version have the same facility.

 

[Marvo]

Maybe some versions can save in other formats, my version doesn't have the option.

 

[nickjohn]

Hi, with the version 7.0 its file - export - 2d graphic. This allows jpeg / bmp / tiff / png..
Might be worth having a look for an old copy of V 7.0, if you do get one whenever you start it it asks to update to a newer version just say no each time..

 

[Marvo]

Lol, I just checked my version and it's version6. No wonder it's nagging to update.

Is your version the free one or the full one?

 

[nickjohn]

mine is the free one, just be careful when you download a copy as a lot of them are the most up to date ones and I personally don't think they are as good as V7.0.

 

[nickjohn]

I can't qualify the site but after a quick Goolge found this
Download Google SketchUp 7.0.8657 - FileHippo.com
they seem to have lots of versions.. mine is the 7.0.8657

 

[Marvo]

Thanks for the advice but I'm not going to update mine, I don't use it personally, I only installed it for the kids to play with a few years ago.