I've wired up a friend's garage and I would like to leave him a
straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for
any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Rob

robgraham wrote:
What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Pen & Paper

--
JGH

"robgraham" wrote in message
...
I've wired up a friend's garage and I would like to leave him a
straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for
any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Rob

Rob.
I would use AutoCAD.
But then I have a copy, and have used it most days for the last 15 or 20
years.
Baz

Baz wrote:
"robgraham" wrote in message
...
I've wired up a friend's garage and I would like to leave him a
straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for
any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Rob

Rob.
I would use AutoCAD.
But then I have a copy, and have used it most days for the last 15 or 20
years.
Baz


Likewise but instead of autocad I use M$ Visio


Maybe some of the free PCB Cad programmes have a schematic capture
capability but the OP will have to create most of the electrical (rather
than electronic) symbols

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:42:40 -0700, jgharston wrote:

robgraham wrote:
What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Pen & Paper

.... then, to satisfy the PC requirement, scan it.

I've got a pad of 1/4" squared paper in the cupboard that's really handy
for quick diagrams (USians don't seem to do graph paper unfortunately, or
at least none of the places I've been into yet stock it)

In article
,
robgraham wrote:
I've wired up a friend's garage and I would like to leave him a
straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for
any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

I don't know of one. And most of the CAD packages will take so long to
learn it's unlikely to be worth it.

I use Draw on my Acorn with my own library of symbols. And for electronic
diagrams too.

Rob

--
*Am I ambivalent? Well, yes and no.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Jules wrote:
On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:42:40 -0700, jgharston wrote:

robgraham wrote:
What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?
Pen & Paper

... then, to satisfy the PC requirement, scan it.

I've got a pad of 1/4" squared paper in the cupboard that's really handy
for quick diagrams (USians don't seem to do graph paper unfortunately, or
at least none of the places I've been into yet stock it)

I gave up circuit design after watching an old HP plotter draw in ten
minutes a circuit diagram that would have taken me week to draw in pen
and ink. I 'got into' computers then and never looked back too hard.

CAD leaning curves are steep, but the reults are worth it.


Corel Draw s the best all round 2D package I have found - mixes maths
and pretties very well.

3D Rhino seems to suit me, though others swear by solidworks.

In uk.d-i-y, robgraham wrote:
I've wired up a friend's garage and I would like to leave him a
straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for
any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

I guess you've not done this kind of thing before so it would be a good
idea to rough the circuit out on paper before starting to grapple with
the PC software. Presumably being "just" a garage it's not too
fiendishly complicated.

Having got that far you might decide that the PC would be a bit of a
waste of time, unless you find that kind of thing educational or
enjoyable.

--
Mike Barnes

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:39:14 -0700 (PDT), robgraham wrote:

I've wired up a friend's garage and I would like to leave him a
straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for
any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Rob

Did this for my last GF about 9yo (so nothing complex on her PC) and just
used Word - surprisingly easy.
Left it on her PC, have a copy on mine and also stuck a copy on the access
to the CU and by the CU.
--
Peter.
The head of a pin will hold more angels if
it's been flattened with an angel-grinder.

"PeterC" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:39:14 -0700 (PDT), robgraham wrote:

I've wired up a friend's garage and I would like to leave him a
straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for
any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Rob

Did this for my last GF about 9yo (so nothing complex on her PC) and just
used Word - surprisingly easy.
Left it on her PC, have a copy on mine and also stuck a copy on the access
to the CU and by the CU.
--


9yrs old? Quite young for a GF.

Jules wrote:

... then, to satisfy the PC requirement, scan it.

I've got a pad of 1/4" squared paper in the cupboard that's really handy
for quick diagrams (USians don't seem to do graph paper unfortunately, or
at least none of the places I've been into yet stock it)


So draw a table in your word processor, or turn on borders in your
spreadsheet.

Then print it, with nothing in the cells. Instant graph paper!

Andy

On Oct 15, 5:59*pm, Jules
wrote:
On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:42:40 -0700, jgharston wrote:
robgraham wrote:
What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Pen & Paper

... then, to satisfy the PC requirement, scan it.

I've got a pad of 1/4" squared paper in the cupboard that's really handy
for quick diagrams (USians don't seem to do graph paper unfortunately, or
at least none of the places I've been into yet stock it)

http://www.incompetech.com/graphpaper/

HTH
J^n

On 15 Oct, 15:39, robgraham wrote:
I've wired up a friend's garage *and I would like to leave him a
straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for
any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Rob

I have used the free program ExpressPCB for drawing electronic
schematics. It's got the electronic / electrical sysmbols built in.

Pete

"robgraham" wrote in message
...
I've wired up a friend's garage and I would like to leave him a
straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for
any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Rob




Might be worth looking he
http://www.drawingcoach.com/free-drawing-software.html

mark

"Jules" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:42:40 -0700, jgharston wrote:

robgraham wrote:
What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Pen & Paper

... then, to satisfy the PC requirement, scan it.

I've got a pad of 1/4" squared paper in the cupboard that's really handy
for quick diagrams (USians don't seem to do graph paper unfortunately, or
at least none of the places I've been into yet stock it)

I'll fax you some if you like. I have 100 sheets here. How many do you want?

Bill

"robgraham" wrote in message
...
I've wired up a friend's garage and I would like to leave him a
straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for
any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Rob

I'd suggest you get a copy of CorelDraw 4, which is almost free and well up
to the job. I don't know if it runs on Vista though, never tried it. It
comes with a good library of electronic and electrical symbols, and there
are also some instantly accessible symbols in a pull-out tab.

The best bet is to draw the thing on paper first.

Bill

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:32:01 +0100, Andy Champ
wrote:

Jules wrote:

... then, to satisfy the PC requirement, scan it.

I've got a pad of 1/4" squared paper in the cupboard that's really handy
for quick diagrams (USians don't seem to do graph paper unfortunately, or
at least none of the places I've been into yet stock it)


So draw a table in your word processor, or turn on borders in your
spreadsheet.

Then print it, with nothing in the cells. Instant graph paper!


There's a freeware app called Gpaper.exe. Log, Lin, Sq Root,
Quadratic, Probability, Allsorts, every which way but loose in fact
:-)

It worked fine last time I tried it several years / revisions ago.

It's here :

http://www.freewareweb.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?download=1&ID=316

Derek

In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Corel Draw s the best all round 2D package I have found - mixes maths
and pretties very well.

Didn't know it was still around. Was a reasonable alternative to Acorn
Draw many years ago. I'll have a look for it.

--
*7up is good for you, signed snow white*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Corel Draw s the best all round 2D package I have found - mixes maths
and pretties very well.

Didn't know it was still around. Was a reasonable alternative to Acorn
Draw many years ago. I'll have a look for it.

Gosh, its up to version 14 now...Corel X4..

14 is a bit bloated. 12 is very good, and I have a version 8 somewhere
that is very usable as well.

If only it worked on Linux...

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Corel Draw s the best all round 2D package I have found - mixes maths
and pretties very well.

Didn't know it was still around. Was a reasonable alternative to Acorn
Draw many years ago. I'll have a look for it.

Oh my goodness, CorelDraw is fantastic. It takes a bit of learning to get
the best out of it, but it's full of tricks and shortcuts that make the job
easier. I've been using it since v2. Version 4 was good, 5, 6, and 7 were
bad, 8 was good but had some annoyances, I have no real experience of 9-11
having never loaded them on my own machines, 12 is the one I use now and
it's brilliant, definitely the best ever. I haven't used or seen later
versions.

What puts people off CorelDraw is that is isn't very intuitive. You have to
put a bit of effort in.

Just for a laugh, I must tell you this. In the days of Win 3.0 I had
CorelDraw loaded but the only text programme was the crappy thing that came
with Windows. Since I had been forced by work to learn Corel I took to doing
all my text documents on it! It was really hopelessly bad for this, but it
was the best I had. I still have some mag article originals that I wrote in
CorelDraw. And yer tell that to the young people of today and they don't
believe you . . .

Bill

Bill Wright wrote:
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Corel Draw s the best all round 2D package I have found - mixes maths
and pretties very well.
Didn't know it was still around. Was a reasonable alternative to Acorn
Draw many years ago. I'll have a look for it.

Oh my goodness, CorelDraw is fantastic. It takes a bit of learning to get
the best out of it, but it's full of tricks and shortcuts that make the job
easier. I've been using it since v2. Version 4 was good, 5, 6, and 7 were
bad, 8 was good but had some annoyances, I have no real experience of 9-11
having never loaded them on my own machines, 12 is the one I use now and
it's brilliant, definitely the best ever. I haven't used or seen later
versions.

What puts people off CorelDraw is that is isn't very intuitive. You have to
put a bit of effort in.


Gosh., Its a lot more intuitive than autocad..


Just for a laugh, I must tell you this. In the days of Win 3.0 I had
CorelDraw loaded but the only text programme was the crappy thing that came
with Windows. Since I had been forced by work to learn Corel I took to doing
all my text documents on it! It was really hopelessly bad for this, but it
was the best I had. I still have some mag article originals that I wrote in
CorelDraw. And yer tell that to the young people of today and they don't
believe you . . .

Bill

In article ,
Bill Wright wrote:

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Corel Draw s the best all round 2D package I have found - mixes maths
and pretties very well.

Didn't know it was still around. Was a reasonable alternative to Acorn
Draw many years ago. I'll have a look for it.

Oh my goodness, CorelDraw is fantastic. It takes a bit of learning to
get the best out of it, but it's full of tricks and shortcuts that make
the job easier. I've been using it since v2. Version 4 was good, 5, 6,
and 7 were bad, 8 was good but had some annoyances, I have no real
experience of 9-11 having never loaded them on my own machines, 12 is
the one I use now and it's brilliant, definitely the best ever. I
haven't used or seen later versions.

What puts people off CorelDraw is that is isn't very intuitive. You have
to put a bit of effort in.

The beauty of Acorn Draw is it was written for kids. And even the first
version is pretty powerful. Many later ones with different gizmos - but
still basically the same.

Oh - Coral Draw costs the thick end of 400 quid.

Just for a laugh, I must tell you this. In the days of Win 3.0 I had
CorelDraw loaded but the only text programme was the crappy thing that
came with Windows. Since I had been forced by work to learn Corel I
took to doing all my text documents on it! It was really hopelessly bad
for this, but it was the best I had. I still have some mag article
originals that I wrote in CorelDraw. And yer tell that to the young
people of today and they don't believe you . . .

Heh heh - reminds me of making up some logos using a very basic DTP
package. Nothing like improvising.

Bill

--
*Why do the two "sanction"s (noun and verb) mean opposites?*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:19:37 +0100, Baz wrote:

"robgraham" wrote in message
news:fbc599cc-d59a-4b80-9b89-
...
I've wired up a friend's garage and I would like to leave him a
straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for
any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Rob

Rob.
I would use AutoCAD.
But then I have a copy, and have used it most days for the last 15 or 20
years.



DoubleCad XT (free version!) looks and works very similar to AutoCAD LT.
I like the "free" bit too... :-)

--
Mick (Working in a M$-free zone!)
Web: http://www.nascom.info
Filtering everything posted from googlegroups to kill spam.

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:39:14 -0700, robgraham wrote:

I've wired up a friend's garage and I would like to leave him a
straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for
any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Rob

Possibly OpenOffice with schematic symbols?
http://faculty.evansville.edu/ar63/p...ate_usage.html

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:31:11 +0100, mark wrote:

"PeterC" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:39:14 -0700 (PDT), robgraham wrote:

I've wired up a friend's garage and I would like to leave him a
straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for
any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Rob

Did this for my last GF about 9yo (so nothing complex on her PC) and just
used Word - surprisingly easy.
Left it on her PC, have a copy on mine and also stuck a copy on the access
to the CU and by the CU.
--


9yrs old? Quite young for a GF.

Even younger 9 years ago :-)
--
Peter.
The head of a pin will hold more angels if
it's been flattened with an angel-grinder.

On Oct 15, 8:32*pm, Andy Champ wrote:
Jules wrote:

... then, to satisfy the PC requirement, scan it.

I've got a pad of 1/4" squared paper in the cupboard that's really handy
for quick diagrams (USians don't seem to do graph paper unfortunately, or
at least none of the places I've been into yet stock it)

So draw a table in your word processor, or turn on borders in your
spreadsheet.

Then print it, with nothing in the cells. *Instant graph paper!

Andy


http://software.techrepublic.com.com...x?docid=765595
I'm fairly sure thats the one, it does every kind of graphpaper plus
more I didnt know existed


NT

On Oct 15, 3:39*pm, robgraham wrote:
I've wired up a friend's garage *and I would like to leave him a
straightforward drawing of how it was done so that he has a record for
any changes.

What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Rob


What no-ones mentioned yet is that whatever format its in needs to be
usable in 50 years time. Probably almost none of today's data formats
will be in use then, or will have been for a couple of decades.

The one with the best chance of staying in use is plain text, .txt.
And simple circuits in ascii are easy to do. But personally I'd be
sure to print a copy too. Perhaps even stick it somewhere
permanentishly in the garage.


NT

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Bill Wright wrote:
What puts people off CorelDraw is that is isn't very intuitive. You have
to put a bit of effort in.


Gosh., Its a lot more intuitive than autocad..

Ohh, do you really think so?

Bill

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Bill Wright wrote:
Oh - Coral Draw costs the thick end of 400 quid.
Does it buggery. You can get Corel 4 for almost nothing, and it's fine. No
need to get a later version because by the time 4 came out all the basics
were sorted.What came after was mostly luxuries.


Heh heh - reminds me of making up some logos using a very basic DTP
package. Nothing like improvising.

People sometimes send me photographs embedded in a Word doc, because 'I
don't know how to send pictures but I know how to put them into a Word
document and I know how to send them.' It beats me. If they can send .docs
why can't they send .jpgs?

This friend I have down south has just bought a new camera and she keeps
sending me examples of her photographic brilliance. Trouble is the camera
has massive resolution and the pics (which have no artistic or other value
and are mostly out of focus and/or have camera shake) are 4.5MB, and she
sends five at a time. Most of them are of her bloody cats as well.

Bill

On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:56:32 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
Bill Wright wrote:

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Corel Draw s the best all round 2D package I have found - mixes maths
and pretties very well.

Didn't know it was still around. Was a reasonable alternative to Acorn
Draw many years ago. I'll have a look for it.

Oh my goodness, CorelDraw is fantastic. It takes a bit of learning to
get the best out of it, but it's full of tricks and shortcuts that make
the job easier. I've been using it since v2. Version 4 was good, 5, 6,
and 7 were bad, 8 was good but had some annoyances, I have no real
experience of 9-11 having never loaded them on my own machines, 12 is
the one I use now and it's brilliant, definitely the best ever. I
haven't used or seen later versions.

What puts people off CorelDraw is that is isn't very intuitive. You have
to put a bit of effort in.

The beauty of Acorn Draw is it was written for kids. And even the first
version is pretty powerful. Many later ones with different gizmos - but
still basically the same.

Oh - Coral Draw costs the thick end of 400 quid.


I bought an out of date revision for 3 quid at a computor show,
registered it, and upgraded it for a song.

Derek

In uk.d-i-y, Bill Wright wrote:
This friend I have down south has just bought a new camera and she keeps
sending me examples of her photographic brilliance. Trouble is the camera
has massive resolution and the pics (which have no artistic or other value
and are mostly out of focus and/or have camera shake) are 4.5MB, and she
sends five at a time. Most of them are of her bloody cats as well.

Persuade her to upload them to the web and mail you a link. I think
automatic thumbnail creation is a feature of some sites, so you would
know what was on the pics, and you could download them (or not) as
desired.

--
Mike Barnes

"Bill Wright" wrote in message
...

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Bill Wright wrote:
Oh - Coral Draw costs the thick end of 400 quid.
Does it buggery. You can get Corel 4 for almost nothing, and it's fine. No
need to get a later version because by the time 4 came out all the basics
were sorted.What came after was mostly luxuries.


Heh heh - reminds me of making up some logos using a very basic DTP
package. Nothing like improvising.

People sometimes send me photographs embedded in a Word doc, because 'I
don't know how to send pictures but I know how to put them into a Word
document and I know how to send them.' It beats me. If they can send .docs
why can't they send .jpgs?

This friend I have down south has just bought a new camera and she keeps
sending me examples of her photographic brilliance. Trouble is the camera
has massive resolution and the pics (which have no artistic or other value
and are mostly out of focus and/or have camera shake) are 4.5MB, and she
sends five at a time. Most of them are of her bloody cats as well.



Introduce her to:
http://www.vso-software.fr/products/...ge-resizer.php

It's free!

mark

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:42:40 -0700 (PDT), jgharston
had this to say:

robgraham wrote:
What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Pen & Paper

Exactly. In these few days discussing this one could have readily
drawn out the 'circuit' with a biro on a bit of copier paper - with or
without a ruler!

Don't schools teach engineering/technical drawing/sketching these
days?

It seems a bit(?) overkill to learn a CAD system just to draw out a
few subcircuits.

In fact, if you label your CUs, sockets, lights etc suitably in a tree
formation there should be very little need for extra documentation.
It may be appropriate to write a document describing your choice of,
say, cable sizes and calculated/measured earth impedances. The actual
circuits are probably trivial.

--
Frank Erskine

On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:07:32 +0100, Bill Wright wrote:
People sometimes send me photographs embedded in a Word doc, because 'I
don't know how to send pictures but I know how to put them into a Word
document and I know how to send them.' It beats me. If they can send .docs
why can't they send .jpgs?

Times where I've seen that have been where users wanted to either package
several images together in one file, or they wanted to resize them -
something that MS platforms didn't used to do very well out of the box.
ISTR there being a time where MS paint wouldn't even save in JPEG format.
Not sure what the modern excuse is, though, unless the bundles OS utilites
are still that bad...

(I saw it a lot in the corporate world - where employees weren't allowed
the install their own software, so they couldn't even put something on
there to do the job)

This friend I have down south has just bought a new camera and she keeps
sending me examples of her photographic brilliance. Trouble is the
camera has massive resolution and the pics (which have no artistic or
other value and are mostly out of focus and/or have camera shake) are
4.5MB, and she sends five at a time. Most of them are of her bloody cats
as well.

The one that really ****es me off is when someone sends you an enormous
uncompressed bitmap for some crap that may as well been in a different
format at a fraction of the size.

That or people who send me plain-text information as PDF files, Word
documents and the like. And people who top-post in emails. And send them
out in HTML format. And animated smilies. etc. etc.
:-)

"Bill Wright" wrote in message
...

People sometimes send me photographs embedded in a Word doc, because 'I
don't know how to send pictures but I know how to put them into a Word
document and I know how to send them.' It beats me. If they can send .docs
why can't they send .jpgs?

For screenshots, embedded into a word doc works quite well if you're not
competent enough to generate a png. Word compresses them enough to make them
not painful, and people can cope with "prt sc, then paste into a new word
document" if you want eg a picture of an error screen.

"Jules" wrote in message
news
That or people who send me plain-text information as PDF files, Word
documents and the like. And people who top-post in emails. And send them
out in HTML format. And animated smilies. etc. etc.
:-)

So really then, it's everybody. You're like me.

Bill

In uk.d-i-y, Clive George wrote:
"Bill Wright" wrote in message
.. .

People sometimes send me photographs embedded in a Word doc, because 'I
don't know how to send pictures but I know how to put them into a Word
document and I know how to send them.' It beats me. If they can send .docs
why can't they send .jpgs?

For screenshots, embedded into a word doc works quite well if you're not
competent enough to generate a png. Word compresses them enough to make them
not painful, and people can cope with "prt sc, then paste into a new word
document" if you want eg a picture of an error screen.

That must be some version of Word than I've never used. IME Word
*expands* images (as if jpg - bmp), and in the most recent version I've
used (2002) the tools that are supposed to compress them are well-hidden
and non-functional.

The other problem, for photos rather than screen shots, is that all the
tags (e.g. when taken) are lost.

--
Mike Barnes

Clive George wrote:


For screenshots, embedded into a word doc works quite well if you're not
competent enough to generate a png. Word compresses them enough to make them
not painful, and people can cope with "prt sc, then paste into a new word
document" if you want eg a picture of an error screen.


But doing so to Excel is better. I keep getting sent Word screenshots
that are awkward to view - as they are so scaled down to fit within the
margins. And this is getting worse as people generally have larger and
larger screens. (Is Alt+PrtSc too complicated? Most of the time it is a
window they need to report.) The odd person sends an Excel spreadsheet -
I can open the application full screen and see a reasonable screenshot
straight away.

And yes - the bundled picture tools are unbelievably awkward and slow.
I'd drop a copy of IrfanView on every PC...

--
Rod

On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:28:38 +0100, Rod wrote:

Clive George wrote:


For screenshots, embedded into a word doc works quite well if you're not
competent enough to generate a png. Word compresses them enough to make them
not painful, and people can cope with "prt sc, then paste into a new word
document" if you want eg a picture of an error screen.

But doing so to Excel is better. I keep getting sent Word screenshots
that are awkward to view - as they are so scaled down to fit within the
margins. And this is getting worse as people generally have larger and
larger screens. (Is Alt+PrtSc too complicated? Most of the time it is a
window they need to report.) The odd person sends an Excel spreadsheet -
I can open the application full screen and see a reasonable screenshot
straight away.

And yes - the bundled picture tools are unbelievably awkward and slow.
I'd drop a copy of IrfanView on every PC...

I do that on every PC I build or work on. Takes about 20s to turn a 20MB
JPG in to 50kB of acceptable quality for a snap of somebody's little
cat/brat.
--
Peter.
The head of a pin will hold more angels if
it's been flattened with an angel-grinder.

Frank Erskine wrote:
On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:42:40 -0700 (PDT), jgharston
had this to say:

robgraham wrote:
What would be the simplest PC package to do this on ?

Pen & Paper

Exactly. In these few days discussing this one could have readily
drawn out the 'circuit' with a biro on a bit of copier paper - with or
without a ruler!

Yes, but with one *big* disadvantage, you can't correct or change it easily.

Don't schools teach engineering/technical drawing/sketching these
days?

They never did except for people going towards technical careers did they?

It seems a bit(?) overkill to learn a CAD system just to draw out a
few subcircuits.

In fact, if you label your CUs, sockets, lights etc suitably in a tree
formation there should be very little need for extra documentation.
It may be appropriate to write a document describing your choice of,
say, cable sizes and calculated/measured earth impedances. The actual
circuits are probably trivial.

Probably true for house wiring though I would like to record some of
the *routing* of my ring circuits becaus (for 'historical' reasons)
some are far from obvious.

--
Chris Green