QElectroTech draws schematics and deliberately stops short of simulating them

A schematics editor with no simulation, and that is the point

QElectroTech, or QET in short, is a libre and open source desktop application to create diagrams and schematics. The software is primarily intended to create electrical documentation, and the documentation adds that it can also be used to draw any kind of diagram, such as those made in pneumatics, hydraulics, process industries and electronics.

The self-description is precise: QET is a CAD and CAE editor focusing on schematics drawing features. The consequence is stated immediately after. There are no embedded simulating or calculating functionalities, and it is not planned to implement them. The main goal of the developers is to provide a libre, easy to use and effective software for schematics drawing purposes.

That is a design decision rather than a gap, and it is worth being clear about before you install it. If your workflow is to sketch the cabinet wiring and then verify it electrically, this is not the tool for the second half. There are EPLAN and LTspice and Visio for people who want more than a drawing, and QET is a free drawing tool that does its one job well.

The audience is therefore the technician, the maintenance engineer and the documentation team who draw schematics for a living and do not want a licence fee. The feature list leans that way too, with configurable folios, titleblock editing, an automatic table of content and a large symbol library, which is a documentation toolset rather than an engineering simulation suite.

Getting the source, and the stack the project commits to

The development section of the documentation describes the classical way of free and open source software, with the source code written by a community of users and freely accessible. The first instruction is to get the sources and sub-modules:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/qelectrotech/qelectrotech-source-mirror.git

The --recursive flag is the part that matters, because the repository uses git submodules, and the top-level listing confirms the shape with a .gitmodules file, a pugixml directory and a SingleApplication directory. A clone without the flag produces a tree that will not build.

The technical choices are listed explicitly. The integrated development environment is the Qt Framework, the libraries are Qt 6.x, and on top of that sit the KF6 Framework, CMake, kcoreaddons and kwidgetsaddons. The coding language is C++, GUI translations are handled with Qt Linguist, version control is Git, and Doxygen produces the documentation, with a QtCreator qch file also published. The file format for projects, elements and titleblocks is XML, the main development platform is GNU/Linux, and the targeted platforms are Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and the BSDs.

The Qt 6 port is the significant thing in that list. The version section says new functionality and fixes are made in the development version, currently 0.100.1 or 0.200.0 if based on the new Qt6 port, and that users who want to test the last implementations should use the development version at their own risk, since things are sometimes broken or only partially implemented.

So there are effectively two code lines. The stable line is on the older stack, and the Qt 6 work sits in the 0.200.0 development version.

The stable release is frozen, and the nightly build is the moving one

The version policy is stated in one line that is worth reading carefully. The current stable version is 0.100 and was released on 2026.01.25. Once it has been officially released, the stable version is always frozen and is no longer developed.

That is an unusual and disciplined release model for a desktop application. The consequence is that a user who installs 0.100 gets a fixed, predictable piece of software, and every improvement lands in the development version instead. The trade is that a bug reported against 0.100 will be fixed in 0.200.0 rather than in a 0.101 release, which suits a project that wants to move a whole codebase to a new Qt major version rather than maintain two supported lines.

The release list shows the same pattern. The tagged releases are 0.100 from 2026-01-25 and 0.9.0 from 2023-01-06, with a nightly Windows build dated 2026-05-10 on top of it. The repository description also points at a page hosting nightly Windows builds, and the project publishes a release notes file for the 0.100 to master transition.

The last push was on 2026-10-20, so the codebase is being worked on even though the last tagged release is from January. For a user, the practical rule is simple. If you need a stable file format and predictable behaviour, take 0.100. If you want the Qt 6 port, take the development version and accept that files may not open in the older one, since the two directions of the port are not expected to be file compatible.

Ffolios, titleblocks and a table of content that updates itself

The documentation features section is where the tool's actual workflow shows.

The GUI is modular. Toolbars and panels can be enabled, disabled, moved and displayed however you want. Panels can be stacked on each other as tabs, docked on the sides as docks, or completely separated from the main window as windows. The interface is said to fit small or big screens and multi-display configurations.

The documentation output is configurable in detail. Size, look and information of the folios, meaning the sheets, are fully configurable. You can set vertical and horizontal headers, the printed rulers, on and off individually, and set the number of columns and rows along with the width and height of each. Titleblocks are created and edited with an embedded titleblock editor, and custom variables can be defined to display whatever information you want inside the titleblock.

The table of content is generated with two mouse clicks, and changes in the documentation are updated on the fly. That last part is the detail that makes this a documentation tool rather than a drawing program, because a schematic that is not cross-referenced and indexed is a picture, and a schematic set with a live index is a document.

The GUI is translated into 25 languages, and a restart is all it takes for a newly selected language to take effect. For an open source tool used across a multinational engineering organisation, that is a practical feature rather than a curiosity.

Over 8,200 symbols, an element editor, and search that can be scoped

The symbol library is the largest single asset. The embedded QET collection contains a rich library of electric, logic, pneumatic, hydraulic and fluid symbols, and the documentation says you can choose from more than 8.200 symbols, with the library growing at every new release thanks to an active user community.

The element editor is the counterpart for everything the collection does not cover. The embedded element editor creates your own elements, whether they are symbols or anything else, and your own elements are stored in the user collection rather than in the shipped one, so they survive upgrades and stay yours.

Search is a first-class feature rather than an afterthought. All collections can be searched quickly with the integrated search engine, and the search request can be restricted to the folder of your choice. In a library of that size, being able to scope the search to a subfolder is the difference between finding a symbol and not finding it.

Drawing itself is direct manipulation. To add an element on the drawing area it only needs a drag and drop from the collection panel. Elements are automatically connected if they are aligned, or connected from point to point by pulling a conductor with the mouse. The path of every conductor can be modified by moving its handles with the mouse.

The alignment auto-connection is the detail that determines whether a schematic ends up readable. Connecting a hundred components by hand is tedious, and a schematic where the wires are wrong is worse than no schematic. Auto-connection on alignment is a small feature that saves a lot of rework.

Cross-platform files, an XML format, and what GPL-2.0 asks of you

QElectroTech runs on the three most widespread desktop operating systems, and the documentation makes a portability claim that is specific: files that were created on one OS can be edited on another without any conversion or restriction. On top of that, MS Windows users can run the ready-to-use version from an external medium with no need to install it on an access restricted computer, which is the profile of an engineer working on a locked-down plant network.

The project file format is XML, for projects, elements and titleblocks, and the examples directory shows the extension in practice, with files such as schema_indus.qet, grafcet.qet, perceuse.qet, photovoltaique.qet and cablage-eclairages_sikli-v5.qet. The presence of examples in the .qet format is a practical advantage, since a new user can open a real drawing rather than an empty sheet.

The licence is GNU GPL, version 2, and the documentation spells out the permissions: you are free to use, copy, modify and redistribute it under the terms of the license. Like many other open source software, QElectroTech is provided as is, without any warranty. The project is free with no licensing fees, no privacy violation and no dependency on a company, and donations are welcome to support development.

For a company, GPL-2.0 on an application you install is not a distribution question, because you are not shipping the binary. The moment it becomes one is if you embed or modify QET and distribute the result, and the repository root shows how much of the project is actually third-party: there is an ELEMENTS.LICENSE file alongside the main LICENSE, a licenses/ directory, and a credits file, so the symbol collection carries its own separate terms and that is the file to read before redistributing a collection.

The community infrastructure is also laid out: a forum, a wiki, a Mantis bugtracker linked from the project description, and a public mailing list archive where all commits are registered and which needs no account to read.

Editorial conclusion

QElectroTech suits an engineer or technician who produces electrical documentation, pneumatic or hydraulic diagrams, and needs a free desktop editor with thousands of ready symbols and a portable XML file format. It is the wrong choice if you want simulation, calculation or netlist export, since the project states plainly that these are not implemented and are not planned, and the wrong choice if you need a team editing one drawing simultaneously, since it is a desktop application with a file-based workflow. Before committing, open one of the example .qet files in the examples/ directory and check that the symbol collections cover your domain, and download the stable 0.100 rather than the nightly build if you need a predictable file format.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. License: GPL-2.0
2. Project website
3. qelectrotech/qelectrotech-source-mirror on GitHub
4. README
5. Releases