TinyCAD is our preferred tool for creating electrical circuit diagrams and schematics.

TinyCAD is an open source “schematic capture program” for all versions of Microsoft Windows. We use TinyCAD because it is easy to learn and use, and because it is free, the diagrams we create are easily edited by others to customize for their needs.

It is also very easy to create your own symbol libraries to meet your needs. TinyCAD drawings are self-contained – you do not need the source library to display a drawing with “unique” symbols. You can also copy a symbol from a drawing and add it to your own symbol library.

TinyCAD can also be used to create printed circuit boards, and can export “net list” information to applications such as FreePCB, which we recommend for creating printed circuit boards.

• TinyCAD
  • http://www.tinycad.net/
  • Download
  • Includes an excellent off-line documentation (printable) and extensive symbol libraries, which you can easily edit.
  • Good tutorial on getting started with TinyCAD: https://github.com/angryee/light-costume/wiki/TinyCAD

Here are the object libraries that we use with TinyCAD. You can load them into your own copy of TinyCAD and use or edit them, but you don't need to download them if you are only using the drawings from this site – each TinyCAD drawing is “portable” and includes all of the object data; it does not depend on an external library.

Creating a useful bill of materials in a repeatable process for many drawings requires a bit of discipline and planning.

Creating Bill of Materials with TinyCAD is the process we follow.