When it comes to schematic layout, element symbols, wirejump techniques, and other practices inside all the companies I have ever encountered, there seems to be no standards. For example, one fire protection company I worked with had real messy drawings. When you would zoom in to wire junctions, the lines did not actually meet, in many cases. It made me ask several hundred times, if that was on purpose. I discovered that many of the symbols used for various components, such as a relay, were just made up by the same person who drew lines that didn't connect. All this made it incredibly difficult to analyze. And, in an industry where people's lives will ultimately be protected by this sloppy engineer's schematics, they were all OK with it. Turns out, the resident "senior" electrical engineer was the only one drawing these schematics. It made me wonder, where was this person trained in schematic layout?
Looking back to the companies I have worked for, it seems that they all had their own slightly different way to design and draw circuits. The fire protection being the most extreme example non standard layouts, though.
Most of these odd drawing I've had the pleasure in trying to deduce, were all drawn in a basic CAD system, not OrCad or EagleCAD, which has standard symbol libraries, or hand drawn on plain old paper.
My question is, does anyone use CAD to draw their schematics? Do you draw your own symbols? And most importantly, were you trained in doing so, or like a lot of us, just learned on the fly? I know that the engineers that hand drew schematics trained for it in college. But, more recently, I do not see schematic layout as a college requirement. I find that a bit troubling.
I must admit, I still often find myself drawing some circuits in a plain CAD program.
Cabe
