Electrical Symbols Library

SW isn't a 2D program (i.e. schematics, P&ID diagrams, Process Flow Diagrams, etc...) no matter what the salesmen tell you.

MS Visio on the other hand does a half decent job of creating these type of drawings. If you have Visio Professional on the same machine as your SW application you can invoke Visio directly from SW (if you have a drawing open) by selecting insert - schematic. ( Note - if the "schematic" is greyed out that means you either don't have Visio on your machine or it is the wrong version).

The advantage of this system is that you can use the SW titleblock and revesion control the file just like any other SW drawing.

It has standard blocks built into it including electronic & electrical. Don't know how extensive they are but you could always find/buy a library of AutoCAD blocks and convert them to Visio easy enough.

The reporting function is pretty nice which allows you to automatcially generate BOM's and such using the properties of the Visio shapes. (2D version of SW's Bill of material that counts parts).

It also works well and plays nice with other MS office applications.

Third party add-ons are available to add smarts to the shapes such as preventing you from wiring up compoents wrong. Others allow you to look up databse values and populate a property dialog box from approved vendors, suppliers, etc.... . Output can also be in Excel which is handy to create a master Engineering BOM.

Cheers,

Len K. Mar, P.Eng. E-data Solutions.

As Len indicates, SolidWorks isn't a good choice for doing schematics, wiring diagrams, logic layouts, etc.. However, if what you're doing is basically just annotating SolidWorks drawings with functional symbols and if you can come up with an AutoCAD library of symbols, as Len also suggests, it's easy enough to make those into Blocks (by SolidWorks' definition of 'Block') and insert those into SolidWorks drawings. Just open them as a Drawing (instead of as a Part). See SolidWorks Help for 'Block'.

'Spork'