Electrical Cad Software

What's The Best Electrical CAD Software For Your Business?

Everyone knows you can now save manpower and untold working hours by drafting your plans on a computer and, in doing so, have your plans look cleaner and more professional and be easier for any installer to read than the old hand-drawn plans.

Chances are, if you work for a large electrical engineering firm, your engineers and design team already use electrical Computer Assisted Drawing or CAD software to draw up all their plans. But did you know smaller firms can benefit from Electrical CAD software too? And they don't necessarily have to pay the notoriously high prices that programs such as AutoDesk's venerable AutoCAD normally command.

Of course, AutoCad remains the industry leader of all the CAD programs and with its legendary support, training, yearly updates and usability, it sets standards few other programs can compete with. Naturally, licensees pay premium prices for these features and while there is some flexibility for the smaller firm, the smallest firms may not wish to make the expenditure - or be able to. If your small or growing office doesn't yet have the budget, are there any alternatives? The answer is: yes.

Ige+Zao and Eplan Electric P8 are other industry standards especially created for the electrical engineer and both are designed to work equally well with the small or large electrical firm and to a certain extent the Heating, Ventilation and Cooling (HVAC) industry.

Both plans offer a free trial period so the curious can compare. Many also turn to Electra 2005 as an add on to Microsoft's Visio. Electra 2005 enables Visio's diagramming ability to convert neatly into circuit schematics for electrical design.

Still too much to pay? There are actually free electrical CAD programs available for download as well as free trials of the most popular CAD software. A quick online search of such sites as CNET revealed several free CAD programs as well 2D and 3D drawing freeware programs that could be adapted to electrical design.

Creative users could take any floor plan design software and add symbols for piping and electronics. There are even free programs to help you with your bidding for projects.