best free software for electrical drawings

I'm going old school with steam gauges in the cockpit so my wiring is simple by comparison to some. I still like good schematics because in my case there are multiple ones and they have all been helpful in developing my understanding of how everything works together. I suspect this is actually a critical step and a drawing schematic alone won't necessarily replace this step.

Good points all - Like you I would echo the importance of labeling both ends of each wire. (Except for some of the ones done late at night in which I forgot that critical step in the process AND have regretted it a couple of times).īottom line for me: All of the thinking that one will need to do won't supplant the need to carefully execute: pin 8 on the A connector of component 1 still needs to go to pin 11 on the B connector of component 3. So what am I left with? A partially completed paper schematic that I didn't use and, in its stead, a well annotated stack of installation instructions representing each piece of installed equipment.

Of course this process will work if done on paper (CAD?) prior to wiring but then you have inserted a step that need not have necessarily been done. Also, not every serial out or in needs a sister in or out. Not as easy as one might expect due to constraints you might find in the text that came with your equipment - for just one example, some ports might want to work best at different speeds. So, one wire at a time, I made notes on the schematics that came with the equipment to keep track of where the serial outs went to the serial ins. I thought that that approach would save time and be a historical archive of some need if not note.Īs it turned out (for me) the most important decision I made was to label each end of each wire that I connected by just taking one wire at a time. That worked well until I ran into the problem of understanding all of the combinations and permutations of integrating the schematics that came with my equipment of choice and my hoped for system schematic. I too thought that a schematic was the way to go so I tried to use my 2D software of choice to do so. Larry, et al, I don't know if my input will be worth anything but - just in case - here goes.

Best free software for electrical drawings