FidoCadJ — The Complete Guide: Quick Electrical and Electronic Drawings for Documentation
FidoCadJ is an open-source (GPLv3) editor for electrical and electronic drawings, and for simple mechanical sketches. It is not an EDA suite: it has no netlist or PCB, just a clean, quick drawing from a symbol library — and that is exactly its strength.
FidoCadJ
Davide Bucci
A very simple editor for electrical and electronic drawings.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Symbol libraries — electronic parts, electrical symbols and PCB footprints for illustration.
- Text format — each drawing is a few lines of text you can copy and paste.
- Export — PDF, SVG, PNG and other formats for documents and presentations.
- Layers — separating parts of the drawing by colour and layer.
- Light and fast — runs on any system with Java and opens instantly.
Who it suits
Anyone writing documentation, teaching material or answers in technical forums who wants a tidy schematic in a minute. Instead of attaching an image, you paste the text, and the reader can open and edit the drawing too. For real circuit design, with a netlist and a board, you need an EDA tool such as KiCad.
Related tools
For schematics with netlists and SPICE export — TinyCAD. For electrical and control panel drawings — QElectroTech. For block and flow diagrams — diagrams.net.
TinyCAD
TinyCAD (open-source project)
Electrical and electronic schematic drawing with symbol libraries, PCB netlists and SPICE export.
Get it from the vendor
QElectroTech
QElectroTech Project
Draws electrical panel and control diagrams from standard symbol libraries.
Get it from the vendor
diagrams.net (draw.io)
JGraph
A full diagram editor in the browser, with no account required.
Get it from the vendor
KiCad
KiCad Development Team
Open-source PCB design suite, from schematic to fabrication files, with no limit on layers or board area.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
FidoCadJ is the small, fast tool for the drawing you need right now — completely free and open, commercial use included.