Linux application similar to Eplan or Treesoft?

Community Feature Request Chat
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Sorry for spamming the KiCAD forum with this question. As a long term KiCAD fan I already know, that KiCAD cannot (yet) do this: My colleagues need a CAD software for electrical schematics according to German/European standards (DIN/EN). We know, that both Eplan (https://www.eplan.de/en/eplan-experience/) and Treesoft (http://www.treesoft.de/software/elektro-cad-software.html) can do it, but they run only on Windows and are relatively expensive. Is anybody aware of a similar software?

And, of course, this is also a - very long term! - feature request! Make KiCAD able to produce DIN/EN conforming schematics and make it able to generate automatically production lists, order lists, spare parts lists, wiring lists, PLC assignment lists.

Many thanks in advance!

2

What precisely makes a schematic EN/DIN compliant? Do you have a link to a standard?

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Kicad is a printed circuit board design tool whereas eplan is a system design tool.
The feature set between these tools is quite a bit different.

  • Kicad does not deal with cables.
  • It is not really capable to have “labels” that point only to each other. There is also no way to have automatic page pointers for such labels,
  • There is no way to mark what side of a 3 way junction the connection is
  • …
4

Perhaps have a look at DesignSpark Electrical

5

Kicad is not designed for Electrical Wiring Diagrams and you would be fighting the tool to do anything which was not trivial. Unfortunately I don’t know of any good free tool.

6

Hello, did you have a look at QElectroTech ? https://qelectrotech.org/

1 Like
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Thanks to all for the hints and links, especially thanks to brutor!
QElectroTech (QET) is - after only looking at it for an hour - a good match for such tasks.
Featurewise, it cannot be compared to Eplan or Treesoft.
I assume, that Eplan has 100 fulltime developers, which is hard to compete against.
But QET is free software, has probably most of the features we want and is crossplatform.
On Debian, Ubuntu etc. it is just “$ sudo apt install qelectrotech” away.
Unfortunately, brutor, you were too late or my company was too fast:
We bought an Eplan license one day before your message!
Everybody else, who comes across this page:
Try QET first, and only if you are not satisfied, look at Eplan or Treesoft!

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