Drawing a circuit diagram

[robgraham]

I've wired up a friend's garage and I would like to leave him a straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Rob

[jgharston]

Pen & Paper

-- JGH

[Baz]

Rob. I would use AutoCAD. But then I have a copy, and have used it most days for the last 15 or 20 years. Baz

[Bob Minchin]

Likewise but instead of autocad I use M$ Visio

Maybe some of the free PCB Cad programmes have a schematic capture capability but the OP will have to create most of the electrical (rather than electronic) symbols

[Jules]

... then, to satisfy the PC requirement, scan it.

I've got a pad of 1/4" squared paper in the cupboard that's really handy for quick diagrams (USians don't seem to do graph paper unfortunately, or at least none of the places I've been into yet stock it)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I don't know of one. And most of the CAD packages will take so long to learn it's unlikely to be worth it.

I use Draw on my Acorn with my own library of symbols. And for electronic diagrams too.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I gave up circuit design after watching an old HP plotter draw in ten minutes a circuit diagram that would have taken me week to draw in pen and ink. I 'got into' computers then and never looked back too hard.

CAD leaning curves are steep, but the reults are worth it.

Corel Draw s the best all round 2D package I have found - mixes maths and pretties very well.

3D Rhino seems to suit me, though others swear by solidworks.

[Mike Barnes]

I guess you've not done this kind of thing before so it would be a good idea to rough the circuit out on paper before starting to grapple with the PC software. Presumably being "just" a garage it's not too fiendishly complicated.

Having got that far you might decide that the PC would be a bit of a waste of time, unless you find that kind of thing educational or enjoyable.

[PeterC]

Did this for my last GF about 9yo (so nothing complex on her PC) and just used Word - surprisingly easy. Left it on her PC, have a copy on mine and also stuck a copy on the access to the CU and by the CU.

[mark]

9yrs old? Quite young for a GF.

[Andy Champ]

So draw a table in your word processor, or turn on borders in your spreadsheet.

Then print it, with nothing in the cells. Instant graph paper!

Andy

[jkn]

HTH J^n

[PeteS]

I have used the free program ExpressPCB for drawing electronic schematics. It's got the electronic / electrical sysmbols built in.

Pete

[mark]

Might be worth looking here:

[Bill Wright]

I'll fax you some if you like. I have 100 sheets here. How many do you want?

Bill

[Bill Wright]

I'd suggest you get a copy of CorelDraw 4, which is almost free and well up to the job. I don't know if it runs on Vista though, never tried it. It comes with a good library of electronic and electrical symbols, and there are also some instantly accessible symbols in a pull-out tab.

The best bet is to draw the thing on paper first.

Bill

[Derek Geldard]

There's a freeware app called Gpaper.exe. Log, Lin, Sq Root, Quadratic, Probability, Allsorts, every which way but loose in fact :-)

It worked fine last time I tried it several years / revisions ago.

It's here :

Derek

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Didn't know it was still around. Was a reasonable alternative to Acorn Draw many years ago. I'll have a look for it.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Gosh, its up to version 14 now...Corel X4..

14 is a bit bloated. 12 is very good, and I have a version 8 somewhere that is very usable as well.

If only it worked on Linux...

[Adrian C]

AACircuit is a simple beerware program to do this. Although the output is just pure ASCII and ye could "connect the dots" with a pin. The following example is some electronics but ye get the idea.

.---o----o------o---o---------------o---o----o------------o 12-15V | | | 22uF| + | | | | .-. | .-. ### | .-. | | .-------o | |