Electrical CAD software is used to integrate electrical systems and designing complex interconnect wiring and harnesses in high technology products such as cars, planes, and trains. Improvements in technology have forced manufacturers to install more electrical components in the same available space to satisfy customer demands. Electrical CAD software allows users to generate different blueprints of electrical systems and select the most appropriate design.
Electrical CAD software is often used in conjunction with mechanical CAD software to integrate electrical systems with mechanical systems in the available space. The software is also used to test electrical design blueprints with the help of advanced simulation tools.
The software allows electrical and mechanical engineers to work concurrently on a design and share design changes. It allows electrical system architects to assess different variations of the electrical layout and combine it with designs provided by mechanical system architects. The software has an electrical design and optimization toolset with an integrated sketching environment that provides seamless integration between different sub systems. The software is developed according to intelligent design rules that support the design automation and configuration of components, as well as the automatic generation of correctly configured wiring schematics and other information.
The software helps in controlling different aspects of wiring design such as interactive design process, physical location of components, and physical routing of wire bundles. It helps in calculating the exact specifications of wire length and wire size for harness manufacturing and ensuring that the wires are correctly sized according to the power they must transmit. This is necessary as using small sized wires will result in overheating and if the wires are too large, it will increase wiring costs.
The software also allows electrical system designers to make design presentations on a computer or other projection systems for getting design approval and making the necessary changes if required.