Nigel Grant Nigel has been working at EPLAN UK for almost 3 years as an Applications Engineer. His main tasks include installing the EPLAN software, giving live demos to prospects and customers and training customers on best practices for using the software. He has previously worked as an Electrical Engineer and a Project Engineer, both of which have driven his passion for helping companies become more efficient and driving their engineering to the next level. Nigel's experience in panel wiring, electrical engineering and project work has given him a well-rounded view of the industry. This enables him to offer customers the best solutions for their processes. grant.n@eplan.co.uk

29/11/22

4 Benefits of ECAD Software

Author: Nigel Grant Time to read: minute minutes

An Electrical Computer Aided Design platform brings the benefits of traditional CAD software to electrical design engineering teams. Whilst ECAD can be used as a standard schematic drawing package, it further enables manual aspects of electrical design to be performed quickly and accurately with automated features. This allows businesses to shorten their time to market as it improves the efficiency of the design process which has a positive impact on both upstream and downstream processes, for example, production.

1) Cost Saving

Inefficient design processes can be one of the main causes of businesses missing deadlines and cost targets. An ECAD platform delivers valuable cost savings by reducing mistakes thanks to standards and design checks, allowing better collaboration and visibility via the cloud and decreasing design time through automated features. Design automation brings direct cost savings by enabling engineers to reuse parts of schematics in multiple designs and applications, allowing for a more accurate and shorter design process.

2) Better Collaboration

An ECAD platform can improve collaboration between your electrical engineers, making it easier to identify and fix mistakes, revise designs, and adhere to design schedules.

Most ECAD software packages enable electrical designs to be easily shared between stakeholders, and clever integrations with other platforms also improve communication with other departments such as mechanical, purchasing and production. The reduction in the effort required to create and revise designs allow for greater productivity and facilitates better communication, while also reducing the risk of human error.

3) Reduction Of Errors

Using a 3D design solution rather than 2D, ensures that any potential errors or clashes can be spotted earlier in the process. If mistakes do get through to production, they are more costly to rectify as time is wasted and there is a duplication of labour, which can lead to delayed delivery times and unhappy customers.

Furthermore, an ECAD platform reduces the overall number of design errors by improving the accuracy of your drawings. Inbuilt automation tools allow greater precision and technical accuracy in your designs, allowing your engineers to focus on the bespoke or individual aspects of each design.

4) Time-Savings

Using a computer-aided design system speeds up the entire electrical design process – with valuable time savings coming from not having to rely on hand drawn designs. As we’ve seen, the collaboration tools and accessible file formats facilitate easier changes and edits, and avoid expensive mistakes going unspotted.

Using an Electrical CAD (ECAD) platform, such as the solutions we provide at EPLAN, yields further time savings, because it avoids your electrical engineers from having to use software systems primarily designed for mechanical design (as is the case with most engineering design CAD applications).

Further cost and time savings are facilitated by better data visibility: ECAD software can utilise data in the cloud or 3D digital twin models in favour of PDF drawings and Drawing Exchange Format (DXF) files used in many product design processes. This allows for greater interaction in the design and manufacturing processes, some of which can be automated.

ECAD Electrical Design Software From EPLAN

EPLAN offers a range of ECAD software solutions to help engineering managers automate and streamline their design processes, leading to significant cost and efficiency benefits. Our ECAD software can be tailored to support numerous design applications, including control panel design and wire harness design, enabling the engineering team to reduce/eliminate errors, speed up their design process in order to complete more projects. To find out more about the benefits of electrical design automation and ECAD, please call 01709 704100 today.

Author