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Placing components
Where the symbols come from, the two ways to put one on the sheet, and what to do with it once it is there.
Everything you draw comes from the library, the panel on the right of the sheet. Placing a symbol is two clicks: one to choose it, one to say where.
Finding the symbol
Browse a category
The catalog is grouped the way an electrician thinks: Power Supply, Command & Control, Detectors & Contacts, Coils & Timers, Control Contacts, Signaling, Protection, Motors, Controllers, Drives, analog signals, measuring instruments and cross-references.
The chips at the top — All, Power, Control, Sensor, Coil — narrow the whole catalog at once when you know roughly what kind of thing you are after.
Or search, which is faster once you know the names
Ctrl + K opens the search over the whole catalog, including categories you have never opened. Type part of the name, move with ↑ ↓, press Enter to take it.
Putting it on the sheet
With a symbol chosen, the sheet is waiting for you: click where it goes, or press Esc to change your mind. The hint at the cursor says exactly that — "Click to place · ESC to cancel".
It lands snapped to the grid. That is not cosmetic: components that share the grid line up their terminals, and terminals that line up are what let a wire run straight from one to the next instead of stepping around.
Place before you wire
Drop everything the circuit needs first, then connect. Moving a component later drags its wires along, but a sheet wired too early is a sheet you rearrange twice.
Once it is on the sheet
| To | Do this |
|---|---|
| Move it | Drag it. Its wires follow. |
| Rotate it | Select it and use Rotate in the toolbar. |
| Delete it | Select it and press Delete. |
| Configure it | Double-click it. |
Double-clicking opens the component's dialog, where its tag, its description and
its own settings live — that is where a contactor gets its -KM1, and a timer
gets its seconds.
Two things the library does for you
Recently used keeps the last symbols you placed within reach. It matters more than it sounds: a control circuit is the same dozen symbols over and over, and after the third contactor you stop going back to the category.
Components on paid plans are not hidden in silence. The catalog tells you how many it is holding back — "+12 PRO components — see plans" — so you know whether the symbol you cannot find is missing or merely locked.
Next
Setting up the sheet
The default A4 sheet, when to change it, and what each field of the Sheet Configuration dialog does to the drawing.
Wiring — click, click, done
The two ways to draw a wire in UnifCAD, how to place 90° corners, how to cancel, how to branch off an existing run, and how to reshape a wire after it is drawn.