DesignSpark Electrical

The free electrical CAD tool from RS Components

  • Automatic wire and component numbering
  • Real-time Bill of Materials (BOM) generation
  • Comprehensive live parts library

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Introduction

We are transforming the world of electrical design with DesignSpark Electrical, our free-to-download design software for engineering professionals. Whether designing from scratch or updating a previous design, DS Electrical is a fully specified electrical CAD package that delivers time saving with high accuracy and error avoidance.

Supported by Schneider Electric, DS Electrical becomes the latest in the suite of free design tools from RS Components. Why? Because due to the substantial costs associated with CAD software, currently a large proportion of electrical designers are making do with unsatisfactory methods such as generic CAD, mainstream graphics software or paper based solutions. With this in mind we want to help you transform the way you work so you can bring your latest products to market faster than ever before.

So leave behind errors, inaccuracies and the tedious manual tasks that take up hours of your day, and switch to DesignSpark Electrical today.

Top 5 reasons to use DS Electrical

  1. Specialist automated electrical design features

    When using DesignSpark Electrical, device and wire numbering occurs automatically, cross referencing updates in real-time and the software checks your work as you design. If something isn’t right, the software will help you fix it immediately, so you can eliminate any time-consuming and costly errors before you get too far.

  2. Our comprehensive integrated parts library

    DesignSpark Electrical offers a huge selection of parts and symbols, as well as a part creation wizard so you can create your very own. There are 250,000 components in our parts library, including 80,000 from Schneider Electric, and they’re all available to add to your design at the click of a button.

  3. Creating accurate 2D panel layouts and diagrams

    Gone are the days of guessing what size cabinet you need, or laying out all the parts and measuring around them. DesignSpark Electrical provides the capability to produce accurate, scaled and dimensioned 2D panel layouts alongside schematics and reports. Cabinets, rails and ducting are all available in the parts library and will be included in the BOM.
  4. Bill of Materials quote function

    With DesignSpark Electrical you don’t need to spend time writing a Bill of Materials or checking that you haven’t missed anything. As you create, DesignSpark Electrical automatically generates a list of all the components you’ve added to your design. Once you’re finished, you can order your parts at RS online with just a few clicks.

  5. It’s completely free

    Free to download, free to use, forever.

System Requirements

CPU:

  1. Pentium® 4 2.0 GHZ or Athlon® 2000+ or faster, 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

RAM:

  • Minimum: 512MB RAM (32-bit), 1Gb RAM (64-bit)
  • Recommended: 2GB RAM or higher

Video Card:

  • Full DirectX® 9c,
  • Shader Model 3.0 hardware support,
  • 256 MB of graphics memory or higher,
  • 32 bits per pixel,
  • 1024x768 minimum resolution.
  • Please ensure that you have the latest graphics driver for your card and that Direct3D Acceleration is enabled.
  • Recommended video cards:Radeon®:
  • ATI® Radeon R300, R420, R520, R600, or R700 series.Radeon 9x00 cards (9700, 9800) or newerNVIDIA®:
  • NVIDIA GeForce® FX, 6, 7, or 8 series. NVIDIA FX5200s or newerAMD™:
  • AMD FireGL™ T2-128 or higher (including the ‘Mobility’ series for laptops)

Others:

  • 2 Button Mouse with Wheel
  • Optional - 3D Mouse (e.g. 3Dconnexion)

Software requirements

Operating Systems:

  • Microsoft® Windows 7 - 32-bit and 64-bit
  • Microsoft® Windows 8 - 32-bit and 64-bit
  • Microsoft® Windows 10 - 64-bit
  • DesignSpark Electrical is not officially supported on virtual platforms.
  • Intel-based Apple hardware running native Windows using Boot Camp is subject to the same hardware requirements as other Intel-based hardware and will require special licensing.

FAQs

  1. Where can I download DesignSpark Electrical?
    DesignSpark Electrical is available for download directly from the DesignSpark website
  2. How much does DesignSpark Electrical cost?
    DesignSpark Electrical is free to download
  3. What file format are designs produced in?
    All drawing designs completed in DesignSpark Electrical are saved in DWG format
  4. Can I import existing DWG design files to DesignSpark Electrical?
    Yes you can
  5. Is there a limit to the number of pages in a project I can have?
    Yes, the maximum number of pages per project is 15, projects are unlimited.
  6. Where can I find out more about DesignSpark Electrical?
    You can find a wealth of resources related to DesignSpark Electrical on our DesignSpark website. This includes tutorials, example designs and additional FAQs
  7. Can I find price and availability within DesignSpark Electrical?
    Yes, version 1.1 upwards enables you to find price and stock availability information as you are adding products to your design, so please make sure you are always using the latest version