39 Electrical CAD (ECAD) Software Free Download | AutoCAD

ECAD Software

In this article, I’m listing the topmost electrical CAD (Computer-Aided Design) software. Also, I’m sharing links for free electrical cad software.

CAD software is used in two main engineering streams Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. For electrical engineering, ECAD software is utilized.

What is electrical CAD software? | Uses

ECAD software is used to design electrical circuits. It is preferred to draw the design on paper.  It means that we don’t require a pen or pencil or paper to draw the circuit.

ECAD software helps to build 2D and 3D type electrical and electronic circuits. Due to the utilization of this designing software, you can easily build, assemble, compose and simulate the circuit. Using this tool for designing, you save a lot of time.

ECAD consists of different software. ECAD tools like electrical symbols, types of equipment, and ratings as per the equipment.

The drawing design with ECAD is very simple. You need to use drag-and-drop options to design the circuit by using software tools.

Here you go ECAD software list.

Different Types of ECAD Software | ECAD Tool

Here, I am listing the best free (open source) and paid CAD software for electrical and electronic engineering students or engineers.

ECAD Software Free Download (Open Source)

The open-source ECAD software is used for learning and practicing purposes.

Let’s see the description-

  1. Electric
    This tool can be used for different forms of design like Custom Integrated-Circuit Layout, Schematics, and Hardware description languages. Read details about the Electric EDA tool.
  2. Fritzing (Download)
    Though it is open-source you have to pay to download this software to ensure future releases, bugfixes, and features.
  3. KiCad
    You can download this software for different Operating Systems like Ubuntu, macOS, Windows, Debian, Arch Linux, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Linux Mint, Flatpak, Gentoo, Sabayon, and FreeBSD.
  4. gEDA
    This project was started because of the lack of free EDA tools available for design. They provide different releases for different operating systems.
  5. XCircuit– Open Circuit Design
    To download this tool, you can refer to this installation guide.
  6. KTechLab
    It is an open-source IDE for electronic and PIC microcontroller circuit design. You can easily simulate design with this tool. Check their wiki on GitHub.
  7. ngspice
    It is an open-source Spice circuit simulator. It comes with a BSD-free license to use.
  8. Oregano
    This circuit simulator is available only for Linux (Ubuntu and ArchLinux). You can not install it on Windows or macOS. Refer to the GitHub wiki for downloading and installation.
  9. Quite Universal Circuit Simulator (Qucs)
    It is an electronics circuit simulator, available for FREE. Here is the GitHub wiki for more details about the Qucs tool.

You can use this free software for your learning purposes.

Proprietary or License-based ECAD Software

Proprietary software is also called as closed-source software. These are the paid software.  It is mostly used in the industrial environment.

  1. ZWCAD(30-day free trial)
    The ZWCAD tool has common components engineers use to draw electrical system diagrams, like switches, lamps, and sockets. It also comes with a Block Attribute feature to build a personalized component library, and the smart plot functionality to generate multiple electronic diagrams at once.
  2. Magic
  3. AutoCAD Electrical
  4. Allegro
  5. OrCAD
  6. Autotrax
  7. Electra
  8. DipTrace
  9. CADSTAR
  10. EAGLE
  11. Easytrax
  12. LTspice
  13. FreeStyle
  14. Multisim
  15. Proteus
  16. Protel
  17. Tango
  18. TopoR
  19. Pulsonix
  20. Upverter
  21. TARGET
  22. Micro-Cap
  23. Ultiboard
  24. Xpedition
  25. BoardStation
  26. DesignSpark
  27. Delta Design
  28. IntegraStation
  29. Altium Designer
  30. SolidWorks Electrical

How can you make the best use of these Electrical CAD tools?

Many of these EDA tools provide a free trial for some days. The industries mostly use these paid tools as they provide more features as compared to free software. If you want to get a hands-on learning experience with this paid software, you can use their trial version. There can be some restrictions to use some features in the trial version.

I have covered all the different 2D CAD and 3D CAD software that are needed for educational purposes and an industrial environment.

Related Read:

If you are willing to learn other electronic designing Software, I have listed some software used in PLC, VLSI, and MATLAB programming.

I hope you find this article useful for electrical design software free download.

If you have any experience working on any of the ECAD and AutoCAD electrical software, share your experience. I would like to include your review of these tools in this article.

Thanks for Reading!

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14 thoughts on “39 Electrical CAD (ECAD) Software Free Download | AutoCAD”

  1. I found this blog through LinkedIn and it includes all the necessary details for electrical engineers. appreciate your efforts. I recommended this to my juniors. Keep going, Ms.Dipali Chaudhari

    Reply
  2. Hi Ms. Dipali, I really want to download ECAD for electrical drawing. Can you please help me to get it?

    Thanks.

    Reply
  3. Hi dipali. So i am interested in circuit analysis of a set of electronic components which have various functions. I have a power supply and i know what to connect with and what not. My question is How i can import an electronic into a software? if there is such software, please recommend it.

    Reply
  4. Hi Dipali

    Can you recommend which is the best software for electronics analysis and simulation of electronics present in UAV?

    Reply

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