Looking for software for drafting PLC panel drawings and loop schematics. Please suggest best software for above

 

I have used AutoCAD Electrical for 12 years and highly recommend it.

 

This topic has come a few times before, which I think is one reason people aren't replying much.

Straight AutoCAD seems to be the favorite, at least here in the US. AutoCAD LT is fine, you don't need the full version. AutoCAD Electrical theoretically makes life easier for PLC type work.

There are plenty of other CAD packages out there, some more popular than others. Some are even free, like SolidEdge 2D Drafting and DoubleCAD XT. (I've tried both, and I'll stick with AutoCAD LT, thanks.)

ePlan and promise-e are elecitrcal CAD (eCAD) packages that have some followers as well. All eCAD packages are considerably more expensive than base CAD programs.

-James Ingraham
Sage Automation, Inc.

 

I have used Aucotec's Elcad for sometime to produce electrical schematics and PLC I/O drawings with x-referencing,it is also possible to produce P&ID drawings.

Aucotec also have Engineering Base (EB) which is also very easy to use.
As already stated eCAD packages tend to be more expensive the base CAD packages though.

 

There are lot of different software available in the market but i prefer the Micro soft software MS-VISIO. All Eng. tools are available on a single click in this software. Just drag and place.

regards,
Abdul Ahad

 

I have seen everything from elaborate and expensive electrical drawing software packages to AutoCADLT or Viseo. One guy I worked with once did his in Excel.

There really is no "best".

 

Panel layout drawings and schematics have two different sets of requirements. Panel layout drawings require 2D CAD features, while schematics really only require the ability to do simple 2D drawings. You will get two different answers to this question, because some people will only consider one requirement or the other. Of course, some people don't *do* scaled, dimensioned, and detailed panel layouts, so they don't care about the ability to do this.

The main argument in favour of AutoCAD LT is that a lot of people use use it, so there are a lot of existing drawings in AutoCAD's proprietary DWG file format. If that doesn't matter to you, then you can probably use just about anything that can do 2D CAD drawings. The negative side of this of course is that AutoCAD is ridiculously expensive without being any better than (or even as good as) a lot of the alternatives.

As for the specialist electrical drawing programs, they are really only worthwhile if you spend most of your time generating new drawings. If you only spend part of your time doing new drawings, or if you are mainly modifying someone else's existing drawings, then they're not really worth the cost.

The other point to consider is that if these drawings are to be delivered to a customer, then many of them will ask for the drawings to be in AutoCAD (or DXF) format so they can do their own updates and corrections. So, whatever you use will need to be able to reliably deal with those requirements.

 

I use Visio. Most of the things I do are only built once (or at most a few), so I just have a panel layout stencil of common 2D parts such as power supplies, IO racks, and relays that we commonly use. This makes for really quick panel layout that is not exact, but close enough for our electrical guys to lay down the DIN rail and wireways with good enough accuracy (I usually give them a 1:1 printout and they transfer punch where the holes in the rail and wireways are.) It does get a little hairy when we put things on the sides of the box (i.e. knockouts), but you can generate a side view as well if things look like they will get close to hitting a tall component.

Oddly enough it is decent at schematics as well. I have to force it to a fixed grid and change behavior of the wire routing a little bit, but its not that hard to figure out. One thing to note, you want to use their connector tool, not just draw "static" lines. When you make components you put their little connection "x" on the part, which makes it like a pin that can be routed to. That way when you move a component it will [mostly] re-route the wires for you.

It's a little annoying, especially after using "real" PCB style schematic capture like DxDesigner (Formerly Viewlogic), but in the end it's an inexpensive program for what it does and you don't have to have a hardware key floating around in everyone's office. It would be interesting to know of an open source program in this area that was really good. I tried the one with open office years back and it was very lacking.

KEJR

 

In reply to Ken Emmons Jr.: Visio is meant for drawing business charts (organisation charts, flow charts, etc.), so doing schematics is not too far from its intended purpose. I find Visio rather hard to use though.

As for Open Office, there are two drawing programs in it. One is part of "Write" (the word processor), and is rather limited. The other is a separate program called "Draw". It also lets you attach the lines to the "control points" on the symbols and drag things around. I've used it for drawing things like Grafcet charts and state diagrams, and I found it a lot easier to use than Visio. I haven't used it for schematics though, so I can't speak for that application.

One of the problems with Visio though is that it's quite expensive for what you get ($740.00 for Visio Pro direct from Microsoft). If anyone else wants to work with the drawing later, they have to buy a copy of Visio. You can get a good 2D CAD program for a fraction of that price. Even AutoCAD LT isn't *that* much more if you shop around for a good discount.

I suspect that a good vector drawing program such as Inkscape could also be used for schematics. Pretty much anything that lets you create vector symbols and insert them into drawings should work.

As for open source software for electronics schematics, there are lots of those. I don't really know much about DxDesigner, so I don't want to make a direct feature comparison though. It all depends on the type of electronics schematics you like to make. This is a very different field from machine control electrical schematics though.

 

I really don't know why people have to use such a complex tools as AutoCAD for this job. I work for a company which do electrical engineering for many ship-building factory in Vietnam from 2002. Most of time I found that Dia is sufficient 99% job, including panel layout and electrical wire drawing.

Yes, we all know Dia don't have many feature. But we can draw electrical drawing, simple electronics schematics, device layout and even simple architecture drawing with Dia. What more do you need ?

I have a rule of thumb: if something can't be drawn by Dia, then the design must be too complex for the ship (not small, something 12000 DWT or bigger) or something go wrong somewhere.

 

RE: Visio

Like Ken Emmon Jr, I use Visio also. It is not fully ACAD compatible. That's a problem.

I use it and pay for it because it is the best drawing tool I have found that lets me concentrate on the 2D EE details of what I am drawing rather how to make the drawing.

I would be great if Open Office Draw were as good. But it is not. Draw's OK for wiring diagrams, but the biggest problem I have with Draw is that you cannot make a scaled panel layout (a.k.a. elevation) drawing with it. The dimensioning tools and the ability to map screen size to paper size just aren't there.

 

I will say that for anything complicated in the mechanical realm I do use Autocad. I've seen people use Visio for detailed mechanical drawings and it is bordering on ridiculous to me. I'll have to try OO Draw again at home and see how far they have come in the last few years as far as basic schematics. I didn't realize that Visio grew up (i.e. Blew up) that much in cost. I can imagine that being really tough on anybody hit by the recession, which includes most individuals and companies that I know of.

I think Visio can export dxf, but depending on how they convert the graphics it could get ugly. I had converted a PADS PCB layout to DXF for our mechanical guys and they had so many layers and detail that it was scary. The file even crashed Autocad the first time we loaded it.

DxDesigner is one of the better programs for schematic capture in the Windows < $10K universe. It used to be paired heavily with PADS layout, but now Mentor graphics uses it for front ends to their higher level layout tools as well (i.e. the megabucks >10K workstation class software for medium<-> large companies). The reason I mention it is that you can do things like drag whole sections of routed wires and it actually behaves well. There is nothing more annoying than drawing dozens of wires equally spaced and well layed out and then move one component and have to go back and mess with all the wires. It also handles things like Visio usually works OK, but is often annoying in this regard.

I will have to download a copy of InkScape for some hobby artwork I do at home. I use GIMP for windows a lot now, and while it's not photoshop it gets the job done. I would suspect that a program like this lacks "wire routing" capabilities as I've mentioned above.

KEJR

 

Dia looks nice, I may try it sometime. I use ACAD LT for schematics and panel layouts. I have not found anything better for me, but maybe because I have used it for twenty years and it is familiar to me. A Visio or Dia type of programming might be nice for schematics, it would be handy to maintain connections as you move things. An easy way to embed and retrieve data from objects would be handy also. Embedded data is possible in Acad, but not easy.

I have used TinyCAD (freeware) for electronic schematics, it might be good for electrical too, but I haven't tried. TinyCAD outputs a net list, which is a list of components and connections.

What the industry really needs is an open file format for schematics, then we could use whatever program we like. Many companies like .dwg or .dxf because of it's popularity. Some variation of XML would be nice, maybe. TinyCAD uses a MS Jet database format.

I saw a very neat looking schematic recently, and the author used MS Paint, of all things. So often, the painter is more important than the brush.

Bill Sturm

 

In reply to bqviet: Yes, I agree that Dia can probably do the job as well as any of the other options. It even comes with a selection of electrical symbols.

The reason why many people use AutoCAD is simply for the file format. A lot of other people already have AutoCAD and know how to use it, so if you give them a drawing in AutoCAD DWG format they can edit it. I don't particularly like AutoCAD, but a lot of people will ask for their drawings to be in DWG format.

If that isn't a problem though, then something like Dia would probably be a good choice. It's certainly a lot easier to learn to use than AutoCAD is. I suspect that if I used Dia enough I could do schematics with it a lot faster than I could do them with AutoCAD.

 

There are lots of free tools for Linux, I use QCad quite a bit. It's free for Linux for non commercial use and like $100 for Windows. I use PCB for boards, it's quite good. I don't know if there is a Windows version. There is also the GEDA suite it's mostly aimed at boards but worth a look. QCad is probably the best for panels and exports dxf. It's an embarrassment of riches on Linux these days with many fab houses accepting the PCB output Gerbers. There are actually more packages than I have time to look at.

Regards

cww

 

The price of Visio did jump. I recall paying about $280USD for Visio Pro 2003. The price is now $560USD. The price Michael Griffin used, $740, that is probably Canadian $s.

Visio is cursed with being most popular among IT users. Most of the cool graphical widgets that have been developed for Visio are racks, servers, switches, routers, and the like.

Microsoft probably realized that IT departments are flush with money and wouldn't blink an eye at the price increase. <vent> For the lot of businesses I work for, the IT department would have better chance of a getting a PO for a spare top-shelf Cisco router approved than the plant engineering staff would have of getting a box of spare fuses approved. </vent>.

I think this tread is indicating that automation pros are looking outside of the ACAD box for better tools to get their job done.

 

In reply to William Sturm:

You said "What the industry really needs is an open file format for schematics, then we could use whatever program we like. (...) Some variation of XML would be nice, maybe."

I guess that SVG would fit the bill. It's a open XML graphics standard that is supported by many different programs.

However, I think that for typical PLC type drawings, it should be possible to automatically generate 90% to 95% of the drawings based on a list of data from a spreadsheet (or other source). All that is needed to generate a typical I/O drawing is a template for the page, what sensors or outputs you want in for each I/O point, the description for the device, and what power and common wires to use.

The template page would be SVG with XML placeholders for where the I/O addresses, field devices, wire numbers, etc. go. The field devices would be more SVG, and it is a simple job to substitute in the field device SVG into a copy of the template (along with the title block, wire numbers, etc.). That would give you an HTML page, or it could be converted into a PDF.

Wire and device cross references and other auxiliary information could also be automatically generated.

Some pages (I think about 5%) would need to be created via free-form editing using an SVG drawing program (e.g. Inkscape, Dia, or something similar). The template page for that would just contain the title block plus a place to stick the free-form drawing.

This is suited for typical PLC type applications where most of the work is simply substituting standard symbols into standard templates. In cases where every page is unique, it doesn't have so much of an advantage.

I don't have time to pursue this idea, but all of this is analogous to things I have already done for my existing projects, so I know it can be done. If anyone else wants to pursue this idea as an open source project though, I can give them some cues as to where to start.

 

In reply to Curt Wuollet: QCad has "pro" and "community edition" versions. The "pro" version is 24 euros and is released under a typical proprietary license.

The "community edition" is released under a GPL license, which means you can use it for commercial purposes. I am not aware of any "non commercial use" version unless there are special terms for their educational package (that is the pro version under a volume license with an unlimited number of installs).

There are versions for Linux, Unix, Mac, and MS Windows. There is no "community edition" version for MS Windows, just the "pro" version (they have discounts for volume licenses though). The "community edition" is a standard package in a lot of Linux distributions.

I can't comment on PC board, circuit layout, and circuit simulation software on Linux, other than there seems to be a lot of them.

 

I had a Windows version at the last job so that I could use the same tool at work as at home. At that time it was more expensive I believe. But yes, I suppose the non-commercial clause has been superseded. A lot of people don't realize that FOSS can be licensed in multiple ways. I haven't needed to look because it's just been there in the last few versions of Fedora. I had Autocad light as well, but QCad seemed
to be faster to do most anything with so I did everything in that. I hope I remembered to grab my blocks.

Regards,
cww

 

The best feature of QCad is very easy to use. I've never seen any CAD software which is easier than QCad. But it's a poor choice for drawing diagrams because it do not maintain links when moving objects. Although not the one-size-fit-all drawing tool, Dia can both.

(1) Draw many types of diagram (flowchat, UML, electrical, electronics, civil ...), maintaining links when moving object and have a lot of stencils to accelerate the job; you just have to drag and drop.

(2) Draw something that need accuracy, such as mechanical parts or architecture layouts.

QCad, AutoCAD can do (2) but not (1), many schematic capture software can do (1) but only for electronics but not (2).

For my job, the following tools are sufficient
* Dia, handy drawing tool
* Varkon, for complex drawing
* Kicad, for electronics schematic capture and PCB layout
* KolourPaint, for simple image edit.
All of them are FLOSS software and really powerfull, not as feature-limited as proprietary sharewares/freewares.