I thought it beneficial to write a brief comparison between EPLAN and ACADE I’ll keep it short and sweet as I’m no writer and the human attention span isn't that long!
A little about me and my experience, I've been in the electrical industry now for 12 years and turned my head to design over 4 years ago since then I have been using EPLAN day in day out so I'm pretty familiar with the software. I have worked on a variety of projects ranging from Crossrail, Airbus, and plenty of automation for OEM & Tier 1 companies. All of these involve control panel designs and then they vary into conveyor lines, robot cells and various machine handling systems.
EPLAN Electric P8 is a powerful, comprehensive software in Electrical design. Is a very important tool for engineers as well as companies specializing in the design and construction of Electrical cabinets. Software to maximize design efficiency, document control and project storage. EPLAN Electric P8 is a CAE (Computer-Aid Engineering) software that helps solve the problems. Designed for businesses of all sizes in multiple industries, EPLAN is an electrical engineering platform that saves time & money. Electrical CAD software for electrical engineers to create industry-specific control system documents. Ideal number of Users: 1 - 1000+ Not provided by vendor. Rating: 3.9 / 5 (8) Read All Reviews: 4.5 / 5 (32). Reasons for Switching to Electric P8: For us, our European customers press us for ePLAN as it is more tightly integrated into their businesses. This was the primary driver to use ePLAN. We still maintain AutoCAD Electrical, but given the choice our ePLAN-trained engineers would go with ePLAN every time, for consistency and speed.
Eplan for me comes in to its own on larger projects. The whole project structure and usability once it is set up properly just makes designing more fluid. It's easy to create report pages, adding in customer logos and specific information they require on plot frames. Giving out a personal and professional look. When designing the automatic wiring is very handy it makes for faster creation of pages and shows you have everything aligned on the grid. Little things like having your 3 phase potential align on the same X & Y axis from page to page happens with ease. The extensive data portal finding parts and manufacture data is excellent and having it constantly update is a great feature. On top of that you can create your own parts and assign a created macro to suit. The symbol library is huge however I feel you still need a symbol creator to personalize for the odd components. The creation of report pages and being able to template them all up to apply to different projects is handy. I find myself typing easy a lot when describing EPLAN and when used correctly that is definitely what it is. It does take a lot of fiddling and there are so many settings to look at rather than simply designing so I will say I think you need training to grasp all of its features simply purchasing it and working it out as you go won't really cut it. You will definitely fall into bad habits and once you find the error management function you will pull your hair out. The main thing that lets EPLAN down is everything is an add on, you don't simply purchase the package and have all the functionalities. If you want to have single line drawings that's an add on, Fluid drawings is an add on, Automatic revision is an add on. You will need to update your software each year and pay a yearly support fee even after you've purchased the software.
Eplan Electric P8
Before I get into my ACADE thoughts I will stress I only did an introductory course and although I seemed to excel with it there will be many functions I haven't used yet. ACADE I find would be a lot more beneficial to smaller companies whose projects don’t really exceed 100 pages. The user friendliness is very good and its definitely easier to just ‘pick up and go’ especially with so many engineers coming from an AutoCAD background in the first place. You’ll find all the same functionalities with the added electrical commands and features. It definitely surprised me in the way it handles projects now, no more opening single pages, you have a project management window and its easy to define and structure pages. The design process is simple you can lay down multiple bus lines, define spacing in between and turn 90 degrees. Its simple to place components using the ICON menu which is populated well. It can be tricky to navigate as they are grouped into folders. For instance it took me a while to find a contactor not knowing it was under the sub folder for motor control. The symbol editor is great and easy to use making all those oddball parts that companies use easy to create and add to the parts library. There's a Parent and child system that will link symbols from the same component allowing you to place contacts from a coil on a different page and you can 'surf' between them. Cat c7 iap valve location. For people with experience in Inventor you will find the right click menu very similar and that works great. What I do find a little annoying with ACADE is, correct me if I'm wrong, you can't seem to have keyboard shortcuts, you need to type into the command bar at the bottom small thing I know but it really slows down the process. Being an AutoCAD system it is great for 2D panel design and you can place used components from the schematic components list with ease. It would be nice to see a 3D function however that isn't essential. What I really like about ACADE is once you purchase the software, which is a yearly subscription but is very competitively priced, you have all the functionalities it has to offer nothing else to pay no add-ons needed.
Driven software EPLAN 21 for creating electrical documents for their cabinet drives. It was earlier decided that EPLAN 21 will be replaced with its sequel EPLAN Electric P8 in the future, since EPLAN 21 no longer releases updates or offers any support for the software. Jul 04, 2014 Eplan Electric P8 Helps you on Panel wiring Design fast & easy way you can check your BOM in that software also can takeoff autogenerated BOM.
To summarise them both I can't really say which is better in terms of designing as I feel they both have great qualities which would be suited to different projects alike but for me as a contractor I will definitely be purchasing a copy of AutoCAD Electrical. For the cost I don’t think you can beat it and picking up work on the side through my company is something i'll be looking into for the near future. Skyrim necromancer armor mods.
Eplan P8 Download
If you have made it this far I would like to take the time to highly recommend the training I received for AutoCAD Electrical from Armada Training. Lee Brown the tutor was an expert and he took time to show me some more advance features as he saw I picked up the basics very easy. I've spoke with the guys at Armada and they have agreed to put on 10% discount to there already great prices for anyone who wishes to purchase a training course. When you add the course to the trolley simply put STEVENCLARKE10 in the coupon section to receive the discount!