Electrical drafting service vs software (uplan, CYPE, Revit)
Short answer: software such as uplan, CYPE CYPELEC or Autodesk Revit gives you a tool to produce the electrical drawings yourself; a drafting service like ours returns the finished set, and you review and sign it. Both routes end the same way — the engineer of record checks and signs. The difference is who does the manual work: the drawing, the bill of quantities and the cost estimate.
Based on public product information on each vendor's website, September 2026. Features change — check with the vendor before you decide.
Side by side
| SingleLineDrafting | uplan | CYPE CYPELEC Electrical Mechanisms | Autodesk Revit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Drafting service | Electrical planning software | Software for modelling electrical and telecom terminal elements | Building information modelling (BIM) software |
| Who does the manual work | We do — the drawing, the bill of quantities and the cost estimate | You | You | You |
| What you start from | The architect's floor plan (DWG or DXF) | Floor plan as PDF or image | BIM model (IFC), DWG/DXF/DWF template or image | Your building model in Revit |
| What you get | The complete set: single-line diagrams, power, socket and lighting layouts, earthing, bill of quantities and cost estimate — editable DWG/DXF, PDF and XLSX | Device placement, wiring diagrams, distribution board drawings, bill of materials, customer quotes | Outlet layout, connection diagrams, built-in checks, drawings (DWG/DXF/PDF), bill of quantities | Drawings and schedules from the model; the 2027 release can also take an architect's PDF or DWG for preliminary load calculations |
| What you need to learn | Nothing new — you review the delivered set | The software | The software | The software and the BIM workflow |
| Who reviews and signs | You — we never stamp | You | You | You |
| Time on your side | Your review time; the set comes back in 2–5 working days | Your drafting time | Your drafting time | Your modelling time |
When software is the better choice
- Your office has drafting hours to spare, and you want the drawing to stay in-house.
- You work in BIM, or the project requires a BIM model: the electrical design has to sit inside the shared model, next to the other trades.
When a drafting service is the better choice
- Your bottleneck is the manual work — hours of drawing and counting — not engineering judgement: a backlog, a deadline, more projects than hands.
- You don't want to license and learn another program for occasional projects.
- You want the whole set — diagrams, layouts, bill of quantities and cost estimate — derived consistently from the architect's drawing, so a socket on the plan, its circuit on the diagram and its line in the bill of quantities always agree; you only review and sign.
- Changes come late. Small ones you can make yourself — the files are editable DWG, DXF and Excel; larger ones we redo across the affected sheets, the bill of quantities and the cost estimate, and you check them.
What about AI takeoff tools?
AI takeoff tools count devices and measure cable runs on drawings that already exist. They are useful for estimating, but they don't produce the design itself, so they aren't compared here.
How our side works
You send the architect's floor plan. We derive the electrical set from it — every circuit, socket and light traceable from the plan to the single-line diagram, the bill of quantities and the cost estimate — and return editable files. We draw to the local rules of the country where the building goes up; the review and the signature stay with you. See a real sample project, what a US permit set contains, or the US FAQ.
Try it on one of your projects. Send the architect's floor plan and judge the delivered set yourself.
uplan, CYPE, CYPELEC, Autodesk and Revit are trademarks of their respective owners. SingleLineDrafting is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by them. Comparison based on public information on the vendors' websites, September 2026.