Hi, my team has been using KiCAD for a couple years now, and we’ve recently run into some problems. We’ve found that KiCAD is difficult to collaborate on and takes too many steps to even get it working. I was wondering what some other teams use for wiring diagrams? I understand that KiCAD is industry standard but it’s kind of annoying to use when you have a group of five people and only one person can work on the document at a time. Are there any nicely collaborative, cloud-based, and free alternatives that work for your teams? Thank you!
How in-depth are you getting with your wiring diagrams? If you only need a basic connection diagram Lucidchart is what we use to block diagram the robot.
Kicad (and Altium) are meant to be used to design circuit boards. A lot of the overhead is not necessary for a wiring diagram but one has to jump through those hoops before one can start drawing.
The one nice feature these programs have is the “rubber banding” of connections as components are moved around the sheet.
At most places I have worked, we used 2D AutoCAD to draw the wiring diagrams so any decent 2D drawing program should work.
we get pretty in depth, wiring every connection from every part of the robot. anything that needs to be wired, we try to include in the diagram.
We just use the generic wiring diagrams available off the web (thanks 3161!) and then use Google Sheets to track our PDH numbering and CAD IDs.
which generic wiring diagrams? can you drop a link?