EPLAN Electric P8

Amazing design tool

Vorteile:

The best part is to create a data base with all the parts you will need in your designs. You have to invest some time creating the data of each part, but once you have it done can be used for any other projects. You can create "macros" of these parts, using symbols, images, connection points and more, just to do it easy to understand. It is an amazing tool to pass the knowledge of the device to the technical personal. You can stablish mounting locations, you can clarify where have to be installed a device. If you invest time adding correctly parts to your data base, you'll be able to generated a BOM automatically, without mention you can generate a very different types of report that will help in your designs.

Nachteile:

Requires a lot of training, but it is completely a good invest of time and money.

Vastly increased productivity

Kommentare: We've seen improvements in time-to-produce schematics.

Vorteile:

My first engineer who we got using ePLAN came from a company with exclusively used AutoCAD Electrical. Within a couple of months, the engineer feels they can work 2-3x faster in ePLAN, access to the parts portal is a massive saving for us, as new products are generally available from the parts portal and do not require us to create a new intelliegent block.

Nachteile:

It feels like there are a lot of "options" which come at a great cost. Full migration to use ePLAN is going to take us multiple years due to the software investment.

Good Potential, But Obnoxiously Bad Documentation and User Interface

Kommentare: To be honest, if I wasn't required to use this software for my job, I would NEVER use EPLAN and would rather learn how to use AutoCAD for electrical designing. That is how poor my experience has been.

Vorteile:

There is not much positive I can say about this software, other than that it has potential.

Nachteile:

To put it bluntly, the documentation of this software is atrocious. I've seen better documentation from college students. As a new user, I would expect clear documentation for simple processes, like changing T-Nodes into Daisy Chain connections, how to incorporate crossover connections to clear up wires crossing, or how to smart connect with devices that don't align neatly with the grid. There is no documentation for simple things like this, and it is like they expect you to know everything about the software from the get go. On top of the lack of documentation, the navigation of the user interface is simply not user friendly. Whether it be creating parts, importing parts, or changing settings, the application is needlessly complicated to navigate.

Using eplan electric p8 on a daily basis raise productivity

Kommentare: Eplan is very robust and neat electrical design software and also the eplan envirenment is so helpful as the digital twin it makes cost estimationt very easy and reduce site modification

Vorteile:

I really like how eplan has a massive library from electrcal component OEM and how it integrates with the software and also as automation project go eplan has cut the developing time to half when using TIA portal as it brigns your tags directly to eplan

Nachteile:

Eplan does not calculate the section of the cables and the harmonics to compaire with the predesign calculation which will be really handy to prepare quotations for clients on the fly

Opportunity for a fresh start

Kommentare: It took several months but now the automation features are working for me instead of against me.

Vorteile:

The Data Portal integration and library of manufacturer provided macros.

Nachteile:

The learning curve is steep and there are many options that are not well documented.