Hello, I have again created a whole series of symbols for electrical engineering.
What do you think of the symbols or have I made mistakes?
I have now drawn a single-family home installation plan. This is what the circuit diagram could look like.
You will probably not get much response because the way you use KiCad is quite different from it’s intended use, but I still like the idea. I have used KiCad myself for drawing an electrical cabinet for a CNC machine and am thinking about using it for some schematic of pneumatic system too. For me doing such things is quite logical, because I would rather “force” it into KiCad, then find and learn another program because I want to do an electrical cabinet once in a blue moon.
But for a company who does this daily, there are other more suitable programs for this (Although such things have been done in autocad for many years too). I also noticed yo opened an issue on gitlab for this (about internal connections in symbols). What is your background? Are you doing this occasionally, or are you from a company and evaluating KiCad for usability?
In due time, maybe KiCad will get some extensions to better suit projects like this, but developers are a very limited resource for KiCad and for the next bunch of years they will have to focus on the core of KiCad for PCB design. There are over 500 open feature requests fro KiCad on gitlab. But because KiCad is an Open Source project, anyone can fork it and (find / pay someone to) implement custom features.
I am wondering how many custom extensions would be needed to make KiCad a “reasonably good fit” for projects like this. Are there many “missing” features, or just a few?
About the project itself:
It looks a bit cramped. The combination of quite wide borders, A5 paper and a big titleblock leaves very little room for the actual diagram. Drawing it on an A4 sheet leaves more room to give some more structure and readability, and at the same time reduces the amount of time to draw such a diagram. I used to put items too close together (both on schematics and PCB’s) and that is a huge time sink.
PE und N dĂĽrfen keinesfalls verbunden werden!
Da stellen sich mir die Haare auf.
Hello Peter, nice that you answered.
Do you mean the symbol for the TT system is wrong?
I have to ask because e.g. B. my house installation is set up exactly like this.
Maybe I have a mistake in my thinking.
I can always turn a TT system into a TN-S system or TN-C system.
@paulvdh Thanks for your answer.
At my last company, we also used AutoCad.
But as always, electricians have the worst documentation. I’ve been retired for 10 years now and realize that I no longer know what I’ve gotten into. In order not to completely lose track, I started drawing one or another circuit with Microsoft Paint for Windows. The next problem was that I’m not familiar with other programs. But I have already created one or two electronic controls with KiCad. So why not electrical circuits too.
Regarding the project, I have to say that I have never worked with buses or multiple pages before.
That’s why the first thing I did was create different page formats. From A3 to A5, and in English and German. Then it was the turn of the most important symbols. I tested again and again whether the form or the expression needed to be corrected.
My table book Friedrich doesn’t provide much either.
In due course, I will publish a template that explains how to draw such a circuit and how you can then read the circuit diagram. It is certainly not easy for the layperson to understand this.
This is my current status. Not the template. Download From GitLab
I think you’re in the wrong place with KiCAD. It’ll work but tortuously.
Perhaps this is more up your alley:
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