39 Electrical CAD (ECAD) Software Free Download | AutoCAD

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

CAD software is used in two main engineering streams Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. For electrical engineering, ECAD (Electrical Computer-Aided Design) software is utilized.

What is the use of ECAD Software?

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- the topmost CAD software list.

What are the Different Types of ECAD Software?

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.

Some popular free ECAD software-

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. You can download it here.
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.

10. 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.
11. Magic
12. AutoCAD Electrical
13. Allegro
14. OrCAD
15. Autotrax
16. Electra
17. DipTrace
18. CADSTAR
19. EAGLE
20. Easytrax
21. LTspice
22. FreeStyle
23. Multisim
24. Proteus
25. Protel
26. Tango
27. TopoR
28. Pulsonix
29. Upverter
30. TARGET
31. Micro-Cap
32. Ultiboard
33. Xpedition
34. BoardStation
35. DesignSpark
36. Delta Design
37. IntegraStation
38. Altium Designer
39. 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.

• PLC Programming Software
• MATLAB Software Tools
• VLSI EDA Tools

I hope you find this article useful for ecad software free download. If you have any experience working on any of the ECAD and AutoCAD software, share your experience. I would like to include your review of these tools in this article.

Thanks for Reading!