Best Free program for WIRING diagrams?

In this case I mean wiring diagrams as in wiring looms, specifically a motorcycle wiring diagram.

This type of thing:



I can’t find any diagrams for my particular bike (Honda CX500 Custom CC 1982, Australian market version) which has some differences (mostly around lighting) as compared with the Jap and US versions, for which diagrams are available. (like the one above)

I’d also like to be able to create a wiring diagram for a ‘customised’ set up (café racer) etc.

Anyone have any tips?

 

Fritzing (http://fritzing.org/home/) is pretty easy to pick up for that kind of design?

 

KiCad allows you to make your own shapes and is also free
http://kicad-pcb.org/

 

If you find a decent one let me know I've been looking for years every program you find will revolve around house wiring or electronics, neither of which work very well for what you're trying to do.

It really depends on how much work you want to put in before you can get any work done, with that said https://www.proficad.com/ is what I've been using for a bit. Very simple to use as far as CAD programs go, you'll have to make at least some of the symbols from scratch though.

I haven't made anything as complicated as what you're trying to do so I don't know how well it'd come up but TBH that diagram is very hard to look at being all on one page.

A semi-ugly example of a harness I made for work.

 

Thanks people, very open to further input too !

@Life_Essence - yes that's the problem I've come across too. House wiring or electronics focus. I'd really like something that could reproduce / create colour diagrams similar to whjat I posted, but monochrome would be OK if it did the job...

IIRC that design is printed across 2 A4 pages (so A3) in the manual.
Splitting it into multiple pages might be good in theory but would make chasing the connections really difficult.

Of course in this day and age there would not (necessarily) be any need to print it. A large image could just be browsed on a laptop or tablet or even a phone.

 

Is the first picture even CAD? You could do the vector stuff on graph paper for input to any graphics program later,
and add the image layers for the symbols.
That somehow looks hand drawn, at least the symbols, and not necessarily done with any electronics CAD, even if it is CAD.

When you determine the top left coordinate on graph paper, you have a bunch of x/y coordinates to draw lines between in CAD.

 

If I was doing that kind of diagram, I'd use a vector-based drawing program like Coreldraw or Adobe Illustrator.

 

A mate of mine working on automotive stuff found this program super useful for his work;

https://rapidharness.com/

 

Seconded KiCad.

Free, Open Source, Capable and supported by CERN.

Proper winner!

 

We use autosketch 10 at work for exactly this job, but it's getting harder to find. Maybe citysoftware has a copy left.

Look at the sticky in the modding forum because you could probably use the free version of solidedge 2D.

 

Thanks all.

 

The worst thing about most of the "CAD-based" programs is that they don't consider a wire is a continuous thing.

So, rather than a line with nodes as corners, they draw it as numerous small single lines... which means that when you try to move something, the lines don't stay connected.

What I mean is that CAD programs tend to follow the "drafting" model where the designer knows what they want to draw and then uses a ruler and a pen to draw it onto the paper. This is idiotic, since the computer software should allow 2 lines to be joined at a corner, but still allow them to be moved (it's hard to explain what I mean, and CAD users don't even realise how dumb this is)

The other thing is that if they do allow lines with nodes, then they don't handle more than one corner very well. I am struggling with one at the moment where I want parallel tracks gong down, left, up and then further left but it simply won't let me draw them that shape.

I may end up using a Word document and drawing elements. However Word want you to use a separate drawing layer if you want lines to attach to nodes on the sides of images or blocks. Overall, it's just a massive complicated mess.

I cannot understand why software designers cannot deal with this simple concept.

 

I completely agree !

@Menthu_Rae Thanks for the tip - that does look excellent. Could be one catch though.
The free community version only allows 50 connections. As far as I can make out a 7 pin plug would count as 7 connections not just one. That uses up the connections pretty quickly and wouldn't facilitate a full motorcycle wiring harness. I have emailed them though to clarify.

 

You're talking about parametric drafting there.

I do it with solid works, you can do it with solid edge 2D as mentioned in my last post.

Here's the sort of stuff I have to do with autosketch: http://i.imgur.com/OEM50T4.png

 

I got a response from the rapidharness people

Bastard Child - cheers mate I will check out the solidworks thing.

 

For anyone who gives a damn and has access tro Microsoft home user program via their work - I got Visio for $10... licenced as long as I work there....

 

man thats pretty nice to look at

 

I'm a drafty and have also looked for a program like the OP wants to replace a wiring diagram for an old car, and give it better annotations etc. I couldn't find anything, and the electrical drafties at work didn't know of anything, so I started in AutoCAD.

What you are talking about with corners can be achieved with polylines and/or the stretch command (I think it's stretch, I haven't used acad in many months). The problem I found was that you couldn't draw wires in a T shape for example, and keep them as one (well you could do it as a polyline and loop it back on itself, but that's not ideal). There is also a grouping command, but that too has downfalls.

Indeed though, acad isn't as effective as other programs I have used in moving multiple nodes at the same time.

You also gotta remember that acad and the like were created a long time ago, when paper drafting was king. So it's no surprise they follow the same model. Then people started doing 3D in acad, and that had downfalls. Then people made 3D drafting programs, and these are all the rage and do the bulk of the work now. AutoCAD is a bit of relic, only used for tweaking the occasional line on a drawing created by a 3D program