AutoCAD for electrical schematics

Hey,

Recently our small company has decided to start using AutoCAD for all of our electrical schematics, as this seems to be the industry standard.

Previously we were using Microsoft Visio, which although not as powerful, was very easy to use.

The problem I am having though is trying to find a suitable title block and electrical symbols to use.

Unfortunately whenever I try to search for electrical symbols/title blocks for AutoCAD it only brings up information regarding "AutoCAD Electrical"

Does anyone have any idea if there are any free IEC electrical symbols and electrical title blocks available for normal AutoCAD?

I have already got the JIC symbol package from MrPLC forums, but this won't be suitable for the majority of our work.

Any information on the best way to start using AutoCAD for electrical schematics would be appreciated.

Cheers.

Well, the best way would be to get the Electrical package for AutoCAD. It has some pretty nice features. We just started using it too. It takes some time to setup initially. Putting all your standard devices in, manufacturers, part numbers, etc. But it saves this all, and once everything is setup, it's nice.

You mean AutoCAD Electrical right? Which is a whole new package?

We already have a copy of vanilla AutoCAD 2010. I was hoping just to use this for basic electrical schematics.

AutoCAD Electrical seems a bit overkill for what we need.

No one uses normal AutoCAD for electrical schematics?

brendan.buchan said:

Recently our small company has decided to start using AutoCAD for all of our electrical schematics, as this seems to be the industry standard.

Click to expand...

and

brendan.buchan said:

No one uses normal AutoCAD for electrical schematics?

Click to expand...

Hi Brendan,

It depends on what you are doing...
I also work for a small company. Sometime ago, my boss trialled/investigated different CAD packages for our schematics/panels.

We found that AutoCAD Electrical to be too expensive, EPLAN to be too hard/complex to learn, and then we found Promis-e.

Now, I am not about to recommend/not recommend this product for you , as I don't (fully) know your needs.

For example;
How many hours a week are you doing drawings?
Do you need to produce drawings with coil/contact cross referencing?
Do you need terminal/termination diagrams
Do you need cable schedules (automatically generated from drawings)?
Do you need automatic wire numbering? Then the ability to export your wire numbers to other packages (such as printers)?


You can read more about Promis-e Versus AutoCAD electrical here in a previous thread.

If you wish to use the AutoCAD LT that you have, then you may be best developing your own symbols & title block(s). Do you use similar parts regularly in your projects?

If your are using AB gear, there are symbols available on their website, but they may not easily fit into your drawings.

Hope this helps
Ian

brendan.buchan said:

No one uses normal AutoCAD for electrical schematics?

Click to expand...

That's what i have been using for years.
I have had to build our symbols library and it has grown.
Electrical, pneumatic, hydraulic, mechanical components,
and the list goes on. we add to it everytime we have a new component.

regards,
james.

You might try to search here:

http://cben.net/?query=electrical

Thanks for the info.

We really don't do many drawings.

We are primarily industrial service electricians that focus on maintenance/breakdowns.

I myself do mostly programming although a lot of it is modifying existing systems, rarely anything new from the ground up.

Every now and then we might overhaul a machine or re-do a safety system though which is where we will do new drawings.

Most of our drawings are pretty basic.

I have attached an example of a typical drawing I have done in Visio.

I was hoping there would be some free IEC symbols or a title block I could use that would be enough to do some similar drawings.

You should be able to go into visio and copy the title block. Next open up AutoCAD and paste it in.

Or...
Some versions of visio allow you to save a visio drawing as a .dwg file. You can start with a visio title block and save it as an AutoCAD file. Then whenever starting a new AutoCAD file, just open the title block and do a save as.

There is a way in AutoCAD to make a particular file your default new template. I don't remember how off the top of my head, but I know it is possible. So you could take the converted title block and set it as your default.

I would suggest that you get your drawing standards down as much as possible early on into your Autocad usage, and then build your symbol library to fit.

It is really pretty easy to build up a good set of "blocks" that include parameters (data items which can change like component names and specs) even without all the fancy tools in Electrical.

I started using Electrical here, because we own it, not for any other useful reason. For what I do, it is very much overkill, and our existing drawings are so "scatterred" in their standards that I can't really take much advantage of all the cross referencing and reporting tools.

I have used the RSLogix import/export tools once, and I have used the Electrical Components library quite a bit to add new things, but the time savings offered by those features is marginal and requires a bit of learning that you avoid altogether by using Autocad standard and "roll your own" symbols.

I used AutoCad Lite 98 for years and it was more than plenty capable, but the symbol library I built up is not IEC so would be of little use to you.

Even if you can't export/import your Visio elements, you can certainly drop them in as jpegs and trace over them. I do this all the time to ensure accuracy when creating new blocks from user manuals.

I typically use paint.net to invert/adjust colors of the bitmap then CTRL+A+C (click on the acad model) +V, then stretch it to my grid, and draw a with a contrasting color right over the top of it. Once your object is drawn, use the wblock command to save it in your tabset subfolders and you can reuse it from that point forward with a few clicks.

I suggest you document your practices as far as sheet sizez, layer usage, grid/snap settings, and symbols layout, and then stick with it from the beginning so you don't end up having to constantly adjust the objects down the road.

There is no reason you can't assign layers the same way Electrical would to make the end results more compatible with corroborators who have that package. The electrical version of Autocad is just a more automated version of what can still be done manually with regular Autocad. If you cranked out lots of designs from concept to assembly drawings, then it would be worth it. In my case, I think I would need to go to some professional training to really know what I am doing with electrical, but I have been able to get by and learn some of it as I go.

ianingram said:

You can read more about Promis-e Versus AutoCAD electrical here in a previous thread.

Ian

Click to expand...

We too are about to change from WS-CAD to something else. We had a demo in the office of Promis-e and it looked very good right up to bit about £600/year maintenance contract - per seat! £600/Year for the office wouldn't be too bad but per seat?

I read the comments in the previous threads with great interest but I wondered what users of current versions felt about Promis-e?

An Autocad Electrical demo will no doubt be coming my way soon.

Nick

Thanks for the info again.

There is no way to export symbols from AutoCAD Electrical's IEC library so I can use them in AutoCAD is there?

Otherwise it looks like I may have to spend a fair bit of time making up my own.

Yes you can export symbols, however it is full of layers and extra info as there is running a database under it.
I am using autocad electrical and ELWIN Trial is free, it costs a whopping 30 euro)for each machine used.
i used caddy (SEE ) before.
I do have all symbols in acad.
just post your mail and i will send them

My email is [email protected]

Thanks.

I used standard AutoCAD for the past 7 years and just bought AutoCAD Electrical a few weeks ago. I made all my own blocks. It didn't really take very long and they got alot of use over the years. Initially I spent about 8 hours to develop the title block and all the blocks I could think of including various switches, safety relays, I/O cards, etc. Then whenever I was doing a drawing set if I needed something that wasn't in my master template I would create the object and then save the block to my master template. It worked very well.

I'm looking forward to using AutoCAD Electrical. It looks like it has a lot of nice features. I just need to find the time to set it up!