Creating my first Electrical Drawing with SOLIDWORKS Electrical

Samony Riyaz is a Programmer here at Javelin Technologies. The article below is an introduction to electrical drawing from her work.

My academic career pursuing Automation Engineering Technology had prepared me well for the SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD world, but I could not say the same about SOLIDWORKS Electrical. Due to this, my experience with mechanical design software is on par, but not electrical. I began to ponder, what truly is an electrical drawing? Lucky for me, I only needed two things to turn this around, a little bit of time and a licence of SOLIDWORKS Electrical!

As I have never used SOLIDWORKS Electrical before, this was my chance to do some learning and see what it could do for me in my courses. One of my goals during my work term with Javelin was to get familiar with SOLIDWORKS Electrical, but unfortunately, I never found the time to do so. You can imagine my surprise when I returned to school and immediately needed to produce electrical drawings complete with bill of materials for one of my projects! Luckily, having made great friends at Javelin, I was able reach out and attain the help and resources needed to get the job done. Thus, began my journey of learning SOLIDWORKS Electrical!

Getting started with my Electrical Drawing

There are many tools available to make non-intelligent 2D schematic drawings from Microsoft Paint all the way up to DraftSight for more detailed drawings. While being useful tools, there are certainly much more powerful resources for complex electrical drawing and system design. SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematic was the right tool for my project as it required minimal design time by clearly laying out the tools required for the job.

Microsoft Paint Drawing – Fischertechnik Punch

As you can see in the diagram above, I had began making a very simple 2D electrical drawing in Microsoft Paint, but due to the lack of detail and specifications, I made the switch to SOLIDWORKS Electrical. I was able to customize the electrical drawing to look much better than it did in Microsoft Paint while adding manufacturer specific intelligence to each component to better represent my drawing through proper connections, symbols, labeling, and BOM.

This drawing completely met the requirements for my project. Due to the timely nature of my goal, it took me approximately 3 – 4 hours to go from never having worked with SOLIDWORKS Electrical, to generating this drawing. Taking this into consideration, SOLIDWORKS Electrical has a much wider range of features which can be customized to fit your needs.

SOLIDWORKS Electrical Line Diagram – Fischertechnik Punch

SOLIDWORKS Electrical Bill of Materials – Fischertechnik Punch

Putting it All Together in SOLIDWORKS Electrical

Through this project, I found that the SOLIDWORKS Electrical workflow made it very easy to set up a project with all my necessary components, and provided me the flexibility to customize symbols according to my needs (as seen in the Microsoft Paint drawing). I have attached another similar project I’ve worked on to get a handle on SOLIDWORKS Electrical including the Line diagrams and BOM for a simple Rotating Unit. Where in a non-intelligent drawing, it wouldn’t be as easy to alter the design, but with SOLIDWORKS Electrical, designs can be re-used and circuitry modified while maintaining design integrity.

SOLIDWORKS Electrical Line Diagram – Rotating Unit

SOLIDWORKS Electrical Bill of Materials – Rotating Unit

Thanks to SOLIDWORKS Electrical and the Javelin team, I had enough time to complete this task and get back to some of my favourite student activities, such as making Kraft dinner and doing homework. With Javelin’s resources and support, you too can become competent with the software and make more time for your favourite activities. Check out our Electrical Optimization Service and discuss with an electrical expert how you can speed up your design process.