LadderWorks Electrical Designer

Punching a whole through your monitor, or simply opening its case reveals tons of circuits and wires. It's the same for any device that uses electricity. Creating such a grid is not for everyone and if you missed one too many physics classes in school it's best to call a specialist for aid. There's a high chance that these specialists use applications like LadderWorks Electrical Designer to create patterns and circuit boards, because it offers a friendly environment and powerful tools.

A neat advantage is that the application requires no installation for it to work properly. This is because it's cleverly built not to make any changes to system registries, keeping your PC in good shape. Another consequence is that you can take it along with your projects on a USB Flash drive.

The application is meant strictly for design purposes, with no simulation mode to test out your project. Thus, there are a bunch of graphic tools at your disposal with which to create different diagrams, circuit boards and schematics. Most of them use their own window so you don't feel overwhelmed with too many features.

With up to three project pages and impressive array of preset components, your task narrows down to filling in different spaces with objects and writing down corresponding details and values. The initial screen is for general design, with more tools for connectors, contactors, I/O pages, and vertical prints. There's a built-in paint utility with which to literally draw your own components, save them as common image formats like JPG, PNG, BMP or ICO, and use them in your work.

Additional tools can be used for calculus, such as the Ohm's law power wheel, binary counter, and different printers. Each come with an attached toolbox either to display corresponding details or to select from various components, just like the initial page.

However, the whole design process can get a little frustrating until you figure out how it works. The point is that every page is actually split into alternating rows for text input and component placement. Even when you get the hang of it, you need to put your imagination to good use and first try to visualize the design. What's more, output is only limited to TXT, but there's a print options which increases flexibility if used with a virtual device.

Taking everything into consideration, we can state that LadderWorks Electrical Designer is a powerful design tool for electrical components and circuit boards. However, you need to spend a little time going through its abundance of different components and the interface isn't all that intuitive to provide quick accommodation. Only when you get the hang of it can you see its true potential hidden behind the poor looks.