I wold strongly suggest that you evaluate Eplan along with a couple of others. While Acad is/was the standard for mechanical drawings... electrical is different.

If you have no legacy, Acad Electrical doesn't bring anything to the party as such...

Research and choose.

Cheers from: Jeremy Pollard, CET The Caring Canuckian!
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Are your drawings going to be completely new designs (from a blank page), or are you going to be modifying existing drawings (retro-fits)?

If you are mainly changing existing drawings, then there isn't a lot of point to using an automated drawing package. The automated packages have their advantage when you are doing a lot of drawings from scratch.

The reason why people use AutoCAD is simply to be able to work with the proprietary DWG file format which so many existing drawings are in. As a CAD package, AutoCAD itself isn't actually very good (I am speaking of the CAD package in general, not the Electrical version).

If you go to the AutoDesk web site, you can buy AutoCAD Electrical from there for $5,295.00. I think that's a lot of money unless you are doing a *lot* of drawings where you can use it's features. AutoCAD LT is $1200.00 (which is several times what they used to charge for it).

Unless you know that you have a lot of drafting work lined up in advance, you might want to consider conserving your capital until you are better established. Try shopping around for a cheaper general 2D drafting package from someone else which can still work with DWG files (the file format has been reverse engineered by several other companies). If you don't need DWG compatibility, there is even more choice for a very small fraction of the price.

 

A lot.

Regards
cww

 

Just over five thousand US dollars. You can't get Electrical from most software places. For example, CDW is not authorized to sell it. You have to go to an authorized distributor. These distributors have at least some room to negotiate price. You will also have to pay for annual support.

 

2nd vote for EPlan. As a small company trying to get more work done in less time, with fewer people, EPlan P8 is awesome. Definitely check it out.

 

AutoCad Electrical does help you out with having electrical symbols and keeping track of device tags and interruption points as well as doing automatic wire numbering. I find that you have to constantly verify and correct wire numbers and device tags. It is not worth the money.

E-plan P8 is a great piece of software but you need to invest the time to learn it properly then use it on a regular basis. Technical support is generally good. If you are doing drawings on a regular basis you will definitely save time especially in large drawing sets.

Giz

 

My company is considering implementing EPLAN Electric P8 Professional. Does anybody have any price indication for this package as I believe the first quote we got was around USD14K for one license + USD 2000 for annual support, which IMHO is ridiculous? AutoCAD Electric 2009 is at one third the price.

 

Hi
I am an electrical engineer about to buy AUTOCAD ELECTRICAL. Does anyone know how much their standard packages are?.And can u tell whether to go for EPLAN or AUTOCAD ELECTRICAL,which one is the best..Kindly give me some suggestions.

Regards,
Oliver

 

It is one third the price (if you already have the ACAD mechanical first then you have to add the Electrical "Add-On"...)but also does one third that EPLAN P8 Professional does.


>My company is considering implementing
>EPLAN Electric P8 Professional. Does
>anybody have any price indication for
>this package as I believe the first
>quote we got was around USD14K for one
>license + USD 2000 for annual support,
>which IMHO is ridiculous? AutoCAD
>Electric 2009 is at one third the price.

 

I bought ePlan compact for $500 two months ago. It is nice, but extremely cryptic! There is absolutely noting intuitive about it! But, as I used it, I do like it. With the compact version, you are limited to 20 pages.

As for price compared to AutoCad electrical: <b>ePlan is horrifically expensive!</b>. I would rate it above AutoCad Electrical, but I cannot justify the cost for the Select or Professional versions. As I told my sales person, ePlan is good, but not that good as to cost 50% more that ACAD-e. Don't get me wrong, I would highly recommend ePlan against AutoCad-e were it not for the price.

In these times, it simply cannot be justified.

Also, ePlan uses a <b>Dongle</b> instead of activation files. (At least my version does.)

 

I recommend Eplan. Our company has been using it for many years now. Some versions are more expensive than ACE, however because of the speed that you can produce schematics, you very quickly make back any difference. It is a very comprehensive program, so you do need training. Even after 7 years I keep finding new ways to save time. If you use Eplan P8 then it is compatible with XP, Vista, W7. The latest version (2) has over 1000 new features, but you can run the program in beginner mode so that you don't get swamped. You get what you pay for at the end of the day.

 

I agree, ePlan is the best ecad product on the market. What will eventually doom them is that they are a one trick and very expensive pony. Most of the software companies whose life blood revolved around one product didn't survive. SDRC (EDS-UGS, now Seimens), Wavefront tech. and Alias (Both now owned by AutoDesk), Maya (Autodesk), Solid Edge (intergraph, UGS now Seimens), Solid Works (Dassault), Borland.