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Wiring Diagram Software

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ryanmills:
For more physical wiring diagrams, for example, I have a power box that has breakers, high voltage relays, timers, and a controller and I need to draw up the connections on a per-wire basis. Does anyone have suggestions on third party software for the diagrams. I'm just a lowly KiCad user, so I'm guessing most of you are using something in Altium. But is anyone using anything with a smaller price tag?

Currently I am doing them by hand in illustrator but it's very time consuming. I tried Visio, utter garbage. SmartDraw looked promising and works decent for everything but drawing a line where you want it, honestly baffling poor design given the name. There is no way Northrop Grumman is using that to make their missile wiring diagrams. I looked at a few more that all look like Visio clones. Have not used fritzing in a few years, might be an option. I have SVG stencils for everything, really just need something that can draw a line the way I want it, did not think it would be that hard. Figured I would ask if anyone else has been down this rabbit hole.

tooki:
Do you mean electronics wiring diagrams (wire harnesses, connections between PCBs, etc), or electrical diagrams (i.e. more along the lines of what electricians use)?

Since you say breakers, relays, etc, I’m assuming the latter. If so: I’m also looking for something decent. The big professional program for that is E-Plan, but it’s $$$$ and from the looks of it has a learning curve. I have Altium, but it’s really not made for that.

ryanmills:

--- Quote from: tooki on November 02, 2024, 12:44:57 am ---Do you mean electronics wiring diagrams (wire harnesses, connections between PCBs, etc), or electrical diagrams (i.e. more along the lines of what electricians use)?

Since you say breakers, relays, etc, I’m assuming the latter. If so: I’m also looking for something decent. The big professional program for that is E-Plan, but it’s $$$$ and from the looks of it has a learning curve. I have Altium, but it’s really not made for that.

--- End quote ---

Really it could be either, I design exhibits for science centers. A wiring diagram can sometimes be as simple as 5-6 connections between a switch, power supply and pi. Sometimes its 20 components and 100+ connections and when they get that dense, I struggle to it by hand and keep it readable. A lot of its just meaningful thought in the layout, but smartdraw for example auto snaps the traces with no way I found to disable it. And that would be fine, but it will snap things collinear to the edge of an object, over the top of another trace, traces will snap and only move left and not right, sometimes they snap and can't be edited. Can't even change the direction of the line jumps. I spend more time fighting the snapping than I do making the drawing. It should be as simple as everything defaulting to be perpendicular to the starting edge, but it's simply not. Baffling design choices.

Ohh EPLAN does look good, sadly its unlikely I can get approval for what I'm guessing is a price tag with a few zeros. I work for the type of people who would rather me burn 30 billable hours doing it by hand than spending $500 once for me to do it in 1.  :palm: In a way I could crowbar KiCad to do it but its time consuming. I do my mechinal work in Solidworks and again, I can kind of crowbar it but, clunky.

Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: ryanmills on November 02, 2024, 12:23:09 am ---I have SVG stencils for everything
--- End quote ---
Tried Inkscape yet?  With suitable grids (both regular rectangular, and axonometric for hex grids) and snap options, it might be a good fit for your needs.  I use it a lot.

CatalinaWOW:
You might try QElectroTech.  Its free and has both good and bad points.  Seems oriented to plumbing, hydraulics and electrical wiring diagrams that need to be more physically descriptive than schematics.

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