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Electrical Schematic design software

jc11378

Active Member
I have seen over the years on this site Electrical schematics that looked professionally designed, with all the different pieces represented correctly.

What i really want to know, is what software or drawing program did they use. I want to diagram the my entire electrical system, every wire and every device correctly.

I would greatly appreciate it if everyone would share what they did and how.

Thanks

:D
 
What i really want to know, is what software or drawing program did they use.

I'm using a program called OmniGraffle which is a basic drawing app for the MAC platform.

http://www.omnigroup.com/omnigraffle/

I basically started drawing the components that I needed as templates to make adding them to the drawing easy. I'm basing the shapes on the drawings from aeroelectric.com which has lots of samples.

If you're using a PC, Visio is a very similar app.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/vi...103791871.aspx

You also can use any 2D cad program of which there are several free ones for both platforms.
 
TurboCAD works well once you learn how to use it. Pretty cheap for legal, but older, versions from places such as Amazon -

http://www.amazon.com/TurboCAD-15-D...0F1W/ref=aag_m_pw_dp?ie=UTF8&m=A3949BSLI7T6VJ

I have a set of the AeroElectric Bob schematic symbols translated into the TurboCAD format.

symbols-1.jpg
 
Just about any drawing and/or CAD application will work. Some of the more expensive apps have some neat bells and whistles built into them. Some have a learning curve to contend with, like AutoCad. But simple apps like MS Paint can work too.

It really depends on how much you want to spend form both a budget and time perspective. Using Bob's graphic libraries is a good start if you are using one of the more simple applications.

I started mine in Autocad, the switched to Visio, which I found easier to use. I already had access to both applications, so cost wasn't an issue to me. What drove me to Visio was that it was easier and quicker to master.
 
I want to diagram the my entire electrical system, every wire and every device correctly.

Great goal. There are too many homebuilts without that.

In regards to software, I used Autocad because I have used that software since the 80's. The important thing to remember is software is just a pencil and paper. It is you that does the drawing. Choosing and learning software that will read and edit dwg or dxf formats will make things easier in the long run because of how universal they are for 2D drawings. As noted above, the respected Aeroelectric schematics can be downloaded in dwg format and they will put you a LONG way ahead of starting with a white sheet.
 
Whichever CAD system you use, your drawing will be quicker to produce and easier to read (neater) with a few simple steps -

1. Set up a "snap to grid" system for all of your lines.

2. Make a symbol library (or copy Bob N's) that has clear reference points that snap to the grid.

3. Choose a drawing size that will print on your equipment and still let the text be readable.

4. Come up with some way that wires going from sheet to sheet can be labeled and tracked.

YMMV but I found this to work -

Sheet size 11 x 17 - can print on my large printer, but is still legible on a reduced 11 x 8.5 print out.

0.1 inch grid, but snap lines to 2 grid spaces - i.e. 0.2 inches between lines

General text size just below 0.1 inch

And follow this -

crossovers.jpg


Also, as I told the many engineers I trained in CAD schematic drawing, remember that the schematic you make isn't for you, but is really made for some poor sod who is trying to find out where your plane wires are connected to many years in the future.

Hope this helps....:)
 
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Got the idea on VAF

Someone posted a link to this in another thread, but I used the software http://www.expresspcb.com/

It's free and simple, but has some limitations with the stock symbols, so you'll have to generate some of your own to get the level of granularity you're looking for.
 
I use Eagle CAD. Free for moderately sized projects. If you are going to create a PCB with any custom circuitry (not just a schematic for manual wiring) many of the fabs will take the Eagle CAD file directly.
 
Visio

For schematics only, I use MS Visio; there are lots of "shapes" available for free download, and you have lots of control of how the end product looks. The schematic capture / PCB layout products I use at work (Altium, Orcad, etc) tend not to make as pretty of a drawing, and typically are harder to work with.
 
ExpressPCB is pretty awesome, if there are symbols missing its pretty easy to add one if you follow the instructions on their website.

Added bonus for those of us not using Windows or Mac... It runs under Wine on Linux.
 
Thanks you everyone

I want to thank every one who posted a response. Now to decide Turbo cad that i have used before or MS Visio that I use at work. If i could find all the proper objects to use visio that the route i would go. But will upgrade my Turbo cad and give that a run to.

Thanks again.:D
 
I want to thank every one who posted a response. Now to decide Turbo cad that i have used before or MS Visio that I use at work. If i could find all the proper objects to use visio that the route i would go. But will upgrade my Turbo cad and give that a run to.

Thanks again.:D

Do you want a copy of my TurboCAD symbols?

If so, send me a regular e-mail.
 
I want to thank every one who posted a response. Now to decide Turbo cad that i have used before or MS Visio that I use at work. If i could find all the proper objects to use visio that the route i would go. But will upgrade my Turbo cad and give that a run to.

Thanks again.:D

You can see the Stein made my schematics, but an advantage of using Visio at your office is using the big printers for the large format prints! Since I retired that is missed!

Good question and great thread!
 
So we obviously use both kinds of software (and I can be relatively competent or incompetent with either program). We use various CAD/CAM programs extensively for some things, but have settled on using Visio for the electrical schematics....to be blunt it is FAR superior than using CAD (no matter how good at CAD you are) for electrical diagrams. The main reason is as follows:

If you draw up a box with connectors/pin numbers on it like Gil showed in CAD (which is relatively easy to do) then connect all those pin numbers to other pins on other boxes, you can permanently "snap" those individual wires (which in CAD would be a simple line) to a specific pin number or location. While you can do that in CAD, the magic of Visio (or as mention PCB express which is also quite good) is that you can grab an entire box or connector and move it all over the page - and Visio will automatically reroute all the wires, show all the "jumps" where wires cross, etc.. To get that done in CAD is not an easy task at all (no matter the brand), and you usually have to spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning it up. Visio on the other hand is just far superior if you are going to add, modify or change the drawing. CAD is fine if you make a drawing and keep it static, but if you want to play with it much then Visio is just far, far better in almost every way. Basically, without some pretty advanced setup in your CAD drawing, if you move anything you'll be spending lots of time moving the "lines/wires", and also working out the intersections of wires/jumps/bridges manually instead of letting the software do it for you. Snaps, Grids, Intersections, Locks, Splines, Offsets, etc.. are all things you can use to help you in CAD (and can be very powerful on their own), but it's just so much easier and therefore faster to use something else.

Add to that the ability to do a lot more with the symbols (like animate them if you like, bury notes within various objects, tie it to various other MS documents, etc..), the ability to have it automatically route the lines/wires from various boxes as you move them around the page or add/remove them and it becomes a no brainer in my opinion.

Can you do it in CAD? Of course you can and it'll come out looking good...but if you do much modifying or moving of things on the page then you'd just be further ahead to begin with by starting in Visio or something else. Here's an example...lets say you draw up your entire radio stack (or airframe diagram), but before you are done you decide to add something in the plane that interfaces into something currently in your diagram. No problem in either program, but if you need to move around all the boxes you already drew, then that is much easier accomplished (as far as time goes) in Visio than in CAD. With visio you simply grab the boxes, move them around and it'll reroute all of the wires for you (or keep them cleaned up), whereas CAD won't easily do that (it can be done, just not easily).

Also, getting CAD to automatically put in a bridge looking "jump" where wires/lines intersect is not a terribly easy task, and having it dynamically handle moving those jumps/bridges is even more of a pain!

Basically I'm saying use CAD for what it's good for (drawing relatively static diagrams, objects, panels, etc..), but use something else for the interactive stuff.

That's just my 2 cents as usual.

Cheers,
Stein

PS, my last hint would be to print it out in a LARGE piece of paper (like plotter paper size C/D/E, not 8.5, legal, or ledger. Again, you can put it on small sheets (or multiple sheets), but having it all one on large piece of paper is FAR superior is most every way.
 
Some kindly, thoughtful moderator ought to remove this from the RV-10 section to the Electrical section, and make it a sticky.

Thanks!
Dave
(And upon completion, feel free to delete this posting.)
 
Stein,

Again, I think you may be somewhat mixing up your commercial, do it once and deliver methodology, with the incremental development many homebuilders use for their schematics.

Visio I'm sure is a great sw package and has the advantages you mostly describe with an automated schematic machine. I am familiar and was an expert user of $30,000 schematic packages before I retired, and yes they are wonderful.

I also liked the giant plots I could get, but do somewhat disagree with the 'larger the better' paper size comment. Again, it's good for your commercial, deliver it all at once, methodology, but getting multiple Kinko copies of D and E size paper printouts rapidly gets expensive.

The larger paper requires more lines, so the automated moving and correcting is really needed. If you can work in B size sheets, each sheet can be a "subject area" and the way our planes are now usually wired these tend to be somewhat self contained. You might say this is a way of getting around the CAD 'line moving' problem, but I actually rate it as a feature. :)

At work we got away from lots of lines all over a sheet in the 90's and moved more to bus structures, applicable for computer stuff, but much less so for our plane schematics. The many vs. one large sheet question can be seen in the schematics published by the auto manufacturers. They can't seem to standardize and different manufactures use both the 'large sheet' and 'multiple sheet' methodologies.

YMMV, but following individual lines across a large sheet can make your finger get lost. Multiple sheets and a reference that "EFIS PWR" goes to "Power Distribution, Sheet 3" as a signal label can often be easier to follow.

Your example of adding a piece of equipment after the fact can easily be done by simply creating another sheet. Our interconnects seem to be getting easier as time goes on and more and more equipment is connected by serial digital buses. It may be that the new equipment just needs a new bus connection and audio in and out lines to the existing equipment.

You do end up with sheets with little on them, but it may be considered an advantage if you separate the sheets by physical location. This is my aft fuselage sheet -



It is 11 x 17 (before I saved it as a 4000 pixel gif) with 0.2 line spacing, but should be legible for editing and a quick view on letter size.

As far a CAD generated "bridge jumps", I'm confused, the industrial/commercial standards for them went away decades ago. A line crossing another line is just that, a line connection has a dot to show joining, and a crossing with a dot should not exist since dots can get lost in printing. Hence this standard I mentioned -



As far a SW costs go, I use TurboCAD at about $30 for an older version vs. Visio which I believe is around $300. I haven't bought AutoCAD for the same reason.

I don't like to disagree with you given all of the excellent RV panels/schematics you create, but I think your viewpoint may be sometimes from a more production viewpoint than from a homebuilder working on his own, a piece at a time.

PS, I made my own Dynon cables, but your Dynon EMS color coded sensor hook up harness is definitely an essential item to buy.

Even the EMS wire schematic sheet was easy to make with your colored wires. The connections tend to form into bundles going to their own sheets. Once a sheet is made, not much automated moving of blocks is usually required -



PPS Even Vans factory went away from large drawing sheets to a size much more manageable on your workbench for their newer model airplanes....:)
 
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As far a SW costs go, I use TurboCAD at about $30 for an older version vs. Visio which I believe is around $300. I haven't bought AutoCAD for the same reason.

I don't like to disagree with you given all of the excellent RV panels/schematics you create, but I think your viewpoint may be sometimes from a more production viewpoint than from a homebuilder working on his own, a piece at a time.

Gil,

At data point that you may not be aware of is that companies that have an enterprise agreement with Microsoft, can arrange for an option for employee home use of software licensed at the office. Additionally, since much of the corporate world has migrated to laptops instead of desktops, many can bring Visio home with them at night as well.

There also is another option to get Visio significantly less than retail pricing, but you have to become a Microsoft Partner to become eligible. If you don't already have multiple Microsoft certifications, Microsoft makes this option difficult to obtain.

The point is that for many people, there is no additional cost for Visio. They just didn't think about using it for schematics.

Btw, I had no problems with printing the "dot" when lines were connected. Also, many applications (including Visio) can put the U shaped hump at an intersecting line indicating that there is no connection automatically.

Bob
 
Gil,

....
There also is another option to get Visio significantly less than retail pricing, but you have to become a Microsoft Partner to become eligible. If you don't already have multiple Microsoft certifications, Microsoft makes this option difficult to obtain.

The point is that for many people, there is no additional cost for Visio. They just didn't think about using it for schematics.

Btw, I had no problems with printing the "dot" when lines were connected. Also, many applications (including Visio) can put the U shaped hump at an intersecting line indicating that there is no connection automatically.

Bob

Yes, but I lost most of those extras when I retired....:) However, at the large Aerospace firm I worked for Visio was not on the list of approved sw.

As far as the U-shaped hump goes, as I said the drawing standards - both military and commercial dropped them many decades ago.

The dot prints fine - it may be a problem after many copies, which is why it was dropped. Admittedly, it was more of a problem with older printers and obsolete blueprint techniques.

As a totally personal observation, I think schematic sheets full of "humps" look ugly, but like all subjective things, YMMV.
 
Mike,

I have not attempted to import symbols in TinyCad but have generated my own symbols when required.

Bill
 
As you can see, this can sorta be like the "which efis is best" discussion, or "which red car is best". Folks will generally defend or describe what they use, or what they are used to, or what they chose, or what they are/were experts on. Me, I think a case could be made for both (and even for hand drawing, using excel, using MSpaint, etc..) - but between CAD and Visio like I said we own both, we use both extensively and have different things in different programs for different reasons.

Again, like other subjects there won't be an ideal solution for each person. We happen to do this every single day, multiple times per day using both programs. We use CAD, Visio, Photoshop, PCBexpress, Paint, Gimp, Sketchup (which is also quite good) for many hundreds of customer projects as well as our own airplanes - of which we've actually built, completed and flown a number of them...start to finish!

All software programs and diagrams aside, there still is no substitute for getting out and building the plane. The enjoyment from the final result is indescribable, so whatever you choose just keep on building. People survived building many RV's long before they had access to these programs, so pretty much anything will be fine! Just don't hung up on details...remember, "perfection is the enemy of getting it done"! :)

Cheers,
Stein
 
Well said!

I used an A3 sheet, a cheap drafting board, a pencil and eraser to do the main power distribution. Skyview pin-outs etc will be done using the tables in the manuals.

In this modern world, I think we forget that it's sometimes easier to grab a pencil and paper than start up MS Word........ ;)
 
GEE I did not mean to start a primer war. HEHE. The feed back is great and a lot of options. I have been in the IT Business for over 28 years now and yes we are a Microsoft partner so Visio lic, is no issue. I have used Turbo Cad for designing and building a deck around my house. It works great. I use Visio everyday at the office and once I get the symbols imported into viso format. I will try both ways.

I think we loose track of the main goal of documenting our electrical system, which i think should be mandatory to do.

With the great products available it should not be that hard or too time consuming.

Some people take the light and simple approach, some take the High detail thought to everything. That is ok either way as long as our flying carpets are airworthy and well built.

Me, I am in the High detail group so time is not of a concern. I have worked on just about any kind of airplane available, from military fighters to B-52 bombers, to the C-5A/B. General Aviation, with 5 years in Alaska, to contract work for Airlines. So maintainability and high quality is important to me. And Good Documentation is a must.

Lets keep pounding these rivets and wiring the wires. And document it all as we go along. :rolleyes:
 
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