New to autocad electrical - where to start

[Anonymous]

Was a bit quiet at work today so I had a chance to do something i've been wanting to do for a while - have a go at Autodesk / autocad electrical .

I'm familiar with several Electronics CAD packages (Altium in particular, as well as easy PC which we currently misuse for our electrical designs), as well as the basics of autocad inventor and despite this, looking at a few videos and tutorials suchlike, I didn't really get very far. I'd prefer to find something that starts with the basics and builds on that, without assuming any prior knowledge or infrastructure that might not exist on a clean install. What I was able to find on the Autodesk website wasn't that helpful either, either lacking in any flow or needing some base level of familiarity which left it rather confusing without.

End game is to use this piece of software for our electrical design going forwards, and ideally make use of the integration with inventor for cable harness design. Given I got stuck at adding a single component to a drawing this seems like a long way in the future!

Any suggestions of useful starting blogs, tutorials or video series to have a look at would be much appreciated.

[rhesusminus]

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-electrical-forum/autocad-courses-learning-path/m-p/10171371#M...

[jseefdrumr]

One of the best and easiest ways to find ways to learn the basics: F1, the good old trusty HELP key. I know that sounds sarcastic as a reply but I don't mean it that way. It's just that on HELP's 'home page' or whatever we want to call it, the first section of videos is called 'Getting Started Videos', and right below that is a section of links called 'Learning'. This includes links to Hitchhiker's Guide for both Electrical and Vanilla ACAD Basics. I would ignore the Vanilla one and focus on the Electrical one. There are also tutorial links and a general tutorials introduction. I haven't looked at this content for a long time but I'm willing to bet that it answers lots of your questions.

Another good resource is Doug McAlexander's website about ACADE.

When you first install and open ACADE, the Project Manager should open by default and display some demo projects. These are there for you to poke through and to learn/practice/experiment in. These are more or less complete projects and they can do a lot to show you how to organize things across several drawings.

One of the most important things for any new user of ACADE to remember is that there is a distinction between ACADE (AutoCAD Electrical) and ACAD (base AutoCAD, frequently called 'Vanilla'). There are a lot of commands they seem to share, but you have to remember that the Electrical version of a command is always the one you should use. Vanilla commands don't know how to manage project data for ACADE so if you use them by accident it can screw up your project data. Stay inside of the ACADE toolbars and do your best to avoid using any vanilla command.

And of course, when you get stuck, the forums are right here.

Good luck!

[ramesh.kambang]

These days youtube is the best place to learn.  See the link below is the best (200+ tutorials) course. This is normally for 3 days course: from basic to expert level. I bet you won't be able to find better (detail) than this one for FREE. Best of luck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naIn9AyLMEA&list=PLAeLusi6vp3Ubq5A8XNj0mFRJ0tOAhP4-