Solving the biggest problems faced by Electrical Designers #5

Using a design process with no capability for panel layouts

When you design an electrical system which includes one or more control cabinets, how do you design your cabinet layouts? Unless you have a specialist electrical CAD solution it probably presents you with a challenge. Whilst you know what parts need to go into the cabinets, it isn’t easy to picture how much space they will take up, so you don’t know what size cabinet you need.

So, what do you do? Do you always order the same size cabinet and just hope it will be OK? If it isn’t OK you’ll either have to use two cabinets or order a larger one and face the delay while it arrives.

Do you wait until all the other parts are on site and then lay them out and measure around them? Even if you can find somewhere clean to do this it will mean added delay while you obtain a suitable cabinet.

Wouldn’t it be great if your design solution made it easy for you to design your cabinet layouts as an integral part of the project? In DesignSpark Electrical, the free yet powerful electrical CAD software from RS Components and Allied Electronics, you can do just that.

Once you have designed your functional system and added all the parts needed to make it work, the panel design feature lets you drag and drop and arrange 2D footprints of all the parts in your BoM, plus cabinets, ducting and DIN rails, until you are sure you have the optimum layout. The whole BoM can then be ordered online with a couple of clicks and the parts will be with you before you know it.

Download DesignSpark Electrical Here

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