Manufacturing Automation Magazine - Diagramming software: Getting your money's worth, by Jeremy Pollard

ControlDesign.com - ECAD Software Eases Electricfication, by Jeremy Pollard

Electra® CAD software is specifically designed for electrical and control drawings. It offers a complete range of powerful tools to reduce development costs and shorten the design cycle, including automatic wire numbering, automatic component tagging, automatic generation and synchronization of panel layout drawings – complete with automatic dimensions, automatic terminal generation and much more.

Built on the Microsoft Visio platform – part of Microsoft Office - Electra® offers ease of use, basic drag and drop, and requires no expensive and time-consuming training. Designed for minimal typing, Electra® helps reduce the development cycle by more than 300% compared to non-electrical specific software.  Standard and user created symbols are intelligent, can assume multiple forms, and can be used for both horizontal and vertical drawings, with automatic text positioning. 
Download for a free 30 days evaluation from www.radicasoftware.com.

Contact John Townsend, Jet Power Products, Tel (032) 525-4480, jetpp1@absamail.co.za

(PRWEB) November 9, 2004 -- Radica Software announces the immediate availability of Electra® 2005, the new electrical Computer Aided Design (CAD) software that is based on the popular Microsoft® Visio® platform.

Specifically designed for electrical drawings, Electra® 2005 requires minimal typing and automatically renumbers and tags wires and symbols in a drawing, enabling users to concentrate on safety and electrical design rather than drawing. The software contains an extensive set of standard - and intelligent - electrical symbols which can assume multiple forms as well as automatic horizontal and vertical text positioning.

“With intelligent symbols the typical symbol set is greatly reduced, empowering the user to do what is most important - designing circuits and generating profits rather than searching for symbols,” says Radica Software CEO, Thomas Yip. “In addition, the software has a real-time cross-reference feature, which allows the user to know precisely what is in the drawing at any time,” he added.

As most designers do not design a circuit from scratch, Electra® 2005’s circuit reuse lets them create a circuit once for reuse many times over with automatic renumbering. This saves the designer a tremendous amount of precious time.

According to Yip, Electra® 2005’s efficiency is virtually limitless. “When an electrical engineer needs to produce a panel layout drawing, the program generates layout components automatically with automated dimensioning. (The conventional method requires tedious and error-prone manual calculations and operations.) If there are any engineering changes, the software can automatically synchronize between a schematic design and panel layout drawing.

“This program also greatly benefits electrical contractors. Instead of manually compiling a list of materials for their quotation or tender they can generate and export bills of material from the program to Microsoft® Excel® in minutes rather than weeks. Moreover, Electra® 2005 is Microsoft® Visio®-based (part of Microsoft® Office®), which means a high degree of compatibility with major file formats such as .dwg, .dxf, jpeg and GIF. Drawings can also be easily exported and saved for web publishing,” explains Yip.

Despite its high-end features, the software is extremely affordable, typically costing only about 25% of other comparable packages. “The return of investment (ROI) is typically just a small project”, says Yip.

Yip explains that companies looking to purchase similar software need to take into account three important factors: the initial acquisition cost, the cost of training personnel to use the program, and the cost of support.

“This is where Electra® 2005 excels. It requires no extensive training or support. It’s so easy to use it’s practically drag-and-drop. All this means greater deployment, higher productivity and more time for better designs. The fact is, technical drawings are an invaluable resource and they should be accessible to every desktop in your organization.”

The software already lists ABB (USA) and Sharp among it’s customers, and have recently appointed Xetec Limited (Ireland) as it’s European distributor.

For more information about Electra® 2005 and Radica Software, or to download a trial version or purchase the software online, please visit http://www.radicasoftware.com. Distribution enquiries are also welcome.

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