Drawing programs

I'm looking for a simple drawing program to draw out my battery, inverter and alternator wiring connections. I have used Smart Draw in the past and I can allways draw it by hand, which I will do to start with. but I was looking for simple suggestions.

You might want to check out OpenOffice. It has a fairly sophisticated drawing program with a bit of a learning curve, but the price is right.

It is clunky, but Excel can be used. I did it with my battery drawing including some pasted in battery and switch photos from the web.

Depending of what to expect to do.
If you jus want to draw lines and boxes something as simple as online tool google draw will make it.
If you want a tool for drafting electrical diagram specifically (meaning with helpers like electronic/electric diagramming figures) you can find a bunch on google, some free.

Beyond this you have standard tools like Visio that can be used too.

L

grahamdouglass said:

I'm looking for a simple drawing program to draw out my battery, inverter and alternator wiring connections. I have used Smart Draw in the past and I can allways draw it by hand, which I will do to start with. but I was looking for simple suggestions.

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Power Point can work OK for that...

-Chris

I have used Visio since it fit, and was delivered, on a 5-1/4" DOS floppy disc.

It has a bit of a learning curve, but it can do just about anything you need in 2D. I usually buy the previous version on ebay for cheap.

All of the below done with Visio. As you can see, it can be as simple or complex as you need it to be. It also does a good job of measuring relative dimensions and allowing you to visualize them.

Lots of online forums, help, and templates/add-ons available.

I was recommended Proficad but didn't try it. I'm a mac user and it seems to only support windows. Looks very complete for electrical drawing and circuits.

https://www.proficad.com/

Thanks for pointing out tinycad. It looks worth the effort to learn.

Olebird said:

https://www.tinycad.net/

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Whatever drawing program you use there will be a fairly steep learning curve, especially if you're new to CAD or anything like it.

LibreCAD is another free 2D. But it's a bugger to learn.

Don't waste time on a drawing program that does not support layers. It's just too hard to work out ideas as you go along without fully starting over. File format can be important as well. At a minimum for CAD work .CAD and .DXF formats. More here CAD file formats

If you need 3D visualization Sketchup is OK. I say just OK because it really doesn't work well with boaty shapes.

TinyCAD probably ok for circuit layout, but for other stuff like including a graphic of a system or part or all of the boat, or dimensioning something, you might need something else.
Like someone mentioned, I often end up using PowerPoint. It's not as precise as autocad programs, but it can be used for almost anything and can make things extremely clear.
We use it because we already have Office though now that MS Office is moving to a monthly pay situation, we will not likely keep getting it.
Open Office has an equivalent to PowerPoint that is free.

I use AutoCAD. Utterly miserable for beginners. But, it's pretty much still the standard for building professionals.

For what you are doing;

MS Excel (you probably already have it)
MS Visio (you might have it or access to it)
Sketchup (free or inexpensive paid version)

Sketchup is easy to learn

Olebird said:

https://www.tinycad.net/

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Alas, doesn't work on Apple.

I started doing a lot in Visio, but have since switched to OpenOffice, then LibraOffice, Draw. Since they all have a huge learning curve anyway, you might as well stick with one that's part of a suite, along with other stuff you might do like word processing, spreadsheets, database and presentations.

CaptTom said:

I started doing a lot in Visio, but have since switched to OpenOffice, then LibraOffice, Draw. Since they all have a huge learning curve anyway, you might as well stick with one that's part of a suite, along with other stuff you might do like word processing, spreadsheets, database and presentations.

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Now that Visio is part of Microshaft, it integrates seamlessly into Word, Powerpoint, etc.

I subscribed to the annual MS Office 360 thing just to get the 5 terrabytes (1TB ea on up to 5 emails) of cloud storage/backups (amortized, cheaper than any other quality cloud storage host). The fact that we also get MS Office products (except Visio ) on multiple PC's and constant updates to those is just gravy.

I'm starting the same project. I looked at SmartDraw and used the free version. It would probably do all I want, but the free version prints a "watermark" overlay that makes actually reading the schematic difficult. I'll look into tinycad.net. It would be great to have all on a laptop, but given the learning curve, I'm tempted to go old school with pencil (and eraser)

I've used OmniGraffle for years on the Mac, and Visio on Windows. Both are very similar in feature, but I find OmniGraffle easier to use. I've used it for high level overview diagrams and much more detailed wire-by-wire ones as well.

Marco Flamingo said:

I'm starting the same project. I looked at SmartDraw and used the free version. It would probably do all I want, but the free version prints a "watermark" overlay that makes actually reading the schematic difficult. I'll look into tinycad.net. It would be great to have all on a laptop, but given the learning curve, I'm tempted to go old school with pencil (and eraser)

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WOW, that sounds painful! I started my engineering career with those......

Visio comes with a HUGE selection of Engineering components - electrical and otherwise.

https://www.expresspcb.com/



More for designing pcb's but good schematics; a lower learning curve - price is right. Also older versions of visio for mechanical if you can find one (PM me). Will not run on some later versions of Windows.

boathealer said:

Now that Visio is part of Microshaft, it integrates seamlessly into Word, Powerpoint, etc.

I subscribed to the annual MS Office 360 thing just to get the 5 terrabytes (1TB ea on up to 5 emails) of cloud storage/backups (amortized, cheaper than any other quality cloud storage host). The fact that we also get MS Office products (except Visio ) on multiple PC's and constant updates to those is just gravy.

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Right. Maybe I didn't explain that well. I started with Visio, but when I abandoned M$ products I switched to the very comparable Open Office / Libra Office. The drawing component of each of those is no harder to learn than many "CADD lite" applications, and the skills from the other components of the package carry over, be it M$ or open source.

My point was this; you need a suite of these core applications anyway. Try out the drawing component of the one you prefer.

As usual, the great community of the Trawler forum did not disappoint. I hope these suggestions benefited everyone who read these posts. Thanks again. Mabey the moderator could make this post a go to resource for things related to drawing programs.

Google Draw

Use Google Draw:

https://docs.google.com/drawings/

Cheers

I use Inkscape for simpler drawings. Qcad for more formal ones.

Inkscape is free. Qcad costs about $50.

Don't know if they support Mac.

Microsoft Visio, easy to use....

+1 for Visio

I used Paint to make my diagram. It’s primitive but comes with windows so I already had it. You could get a copy of Autocad but I’m afraid the learning curve would be too great

For what you want to do, CAD programs are like swatting flies with a sledgehammer. You should probably be looking at drawing programs. Take a look at Draw.io (http://draw.io/). It's simple, free, web-based, and integrates with OneDrive, DropBox, Google Drive, etc, and has a rich set of electrical/electronic shape (drag & drop) libraries. It also has the highest power to ease-of-use ratio of anything free that I have found.

Satch said:

For what you want to do, CAD programs are like swatting flies with a sledgehammer. You should probably be looking at drawing programs. Take a look at Draw.io (http://draw.io/). It's simple, free, web-based, and integrates with OneDrive, DropBox, Google Drive, etc, and has a rich set of electrical/electronic shape (drag & drop) libraries. It also has the highest power to ease-of-use ratio of anything free that I have found.

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Wow. Two minutes with it and I'm already impressed.

Thanks!!

Based on the recommendations here, learned TinyCAD enough to use it for my wiring, a BRUTAL task. It took a week to learn, and I'm retired!

Once you are past the learning curve, TinyCAD is much faster and easier for wiring because it's FOR wiring. For example, if you move a part, the attached wires stay connected! I'm on a roll now!

Given that my wiring was such a mess, requiring complete removal, I am starting from a clean sheet of paper. I know how to use ACAD and drawing software, but schematics are a completely different application, so recommending them is like recommending use of a ratchet handle to hammer nails.

I think I need to mention again that learning it is a BRUTAL thing to learn, but worth it.

BTW, https://www.onshape.com/en/ is a great package for 3D CAD that even runs on my grandson's school Chromebook! I wouldn't even think about trying to do wiring with it though. It's free if your drawings are public.