Hello all, I am looking for software to use to draw electrical schematics.I am looking for something a little more on the cheap side that will allow 9" x 15" drawings. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated

Just curious, why 9 x 15?
Not familiar with that size,
I'm used to:
Letter or A size: 8.5 x 11
Legal: 8.5 x 14
Tabloid or B size: 11 x 17

I have not tried it, but there is a free trial download:
http://www.smartdraw.com/specials/electrical.asp?id=11828

Cost is around $200.00 USD.

This one looks more useful: http://www.cmhsoftware.com/productw.htm $400.00

my mistake, 11 x 17

I recommend the SEE Technical software. It is $200 buck and what you can do with it is great. We use it for all our electrical wiring diagrams, but you can also do hydralic and phnuematic diagrams with it. It has a librairy of all the current schematics that are used. Also you can save it as a CAD drawing and open it on autocad. Try the following link,
http://www.ige-xao.com/see-technical/index.htm

If it does npot take you to the site, the google see technical and it will bring up the website. Let me know what you think!

I use Turbocad from Imsi and I think the price is around $200.




Rodney

EPLAN is The best package I have worked on available on the Market. It is a lot more expensive but will do automatic wire numbering, tracking interuption points, terminal strip and panel layouts and BOMs. It also has a lot of Macros for devices and an excel interface. If you are doing a lot of drawings it is worth the investment in the product and the training but you need to work with it quite a bit to really take advantage of it.

AutoCad Electrical will also do a lot of the above but you need a Cad license also and I find it slow and cumbersome. I find that you have to end up doing a lot or wire numbers manually after an automatic re-wire to correct them.

Giz

Maybe I missed it but what is the name of this drawing package you're talking about?

Giz [/quote]
Maybe I missed it but what is the name of this drawing package you're talking about?
[/quote]

Autocad Electrical its a nice programme but requires lots of training to use and will cost you thousands.

To justify the cost you would have to use it every day and put by plenty of time for training if you are not familier with other autocad products.

E-Plan is great softver too.Price is biger but have all you need.It suport
DIN,JIC,IEC and USA standard for simbols and else.

[quote name='davefinic' date='May 5 2007, 05:45 AM' post='53833']
Giz [/quote]
Maybe I missed it but what is the name of this drawing package you're talking about?
[/quote]

Autocad Electrical its a nice programme but requires lots of training to use and will cost you thousands.

To justify the cost you would have to use it every day and put by plenty of time for training if you are not familier with other autocad products. [/quote]

Thank you.. I thought he was talking about something else at first!

We use AutoCAD to make our electrical drawings, but we don't use Electrical. We've got a "toolkit" that GM provided us that has just about everything we need. I've played around with A.E. a little bit but haven't been able to appreciate its features..

Just out of curiousity, have any of you used EPlan? GM is talking about making suppliers use it, but so far they're still accepting autocad drawings.

I don't do electrical drawings every day, this package looked pretty good for the price. I downloaded the demo,and ended up buying it.

Thanks for the link.

I use ELCAD, I find it easier to use than EPLAN.

www.aucotec.de

Hi Ken

Which version did you end up using ?

Thanks

The cheapest one, of course.

My previous employer used AutoCAD.... versions 2000,2004 & 2007Electrical

If your famillair with AutoCAD the adaptation/migration/learning curve to 2007E isn't too bad.

Do you need extensive training? I hardly doubt it.
I was able to sit down with it for 1/2 a day and was pretty well versed in it... but I've been doing CAD as a hobby for nearly 10 years tho.

I have just got EPlan

Very nice, very impressed and all major manufacturs have there catalogue available as downloads so you just type in a part number (ie siemens 3RT1023 etc etc) and it brings it up.

At the other end of the scale I have just bought Elwin for £22.50

http://www.3xm.se/index_eng.html

It's not perfect, but for the price its very good.

many thanks for the link. I've downloaded and tried the program, it fits almost exactly my needs

I understand that there is a new version on its way with some improvements that have been suggested over the last few months. I have used it for a few projects now and i'm impressed. It maybe isn't as slick as some of the other packages on the market but for the price its great.

After years of looking for suitable software I had a demo of Eplan at a trade show with a quote of £1000 for the basic package, which is still very powerfull although it is limited to 40 pages and cannot tranlate languages. I bought the programme and found it very easy to use, with an excellent symbol library.

I would advise that you factor in the cost of a training course though £750 for 3 days, the tutor was excellent and with a class size of 3 we were quickly carrying out tasks more efficiently and fully realizing the power of the programme and the functions available.

It may sound expensive compared to some of the programs mentioned but I can now produce high quality schematics very quickly.

Thanks alot for all previous information, but I have some questions:
1-Are there any smart electrical drawings software which can give me separate dynamic drawings, so for example if I change terminal orders, it is automatically changed in panel layout sheet, and automatically change cable numbers.
2-Contain cable net tools, as per electronic circuit design software (OrCAD or Eagle).