What Can You Do with PlanElec? From Floor Plan to Installation Dossier

With PlanElec, you plan a Belgian electrical installation in a single project: from floor plan through devices, cables, circuits and distribution board to single-line diagram, situation plan, AREI/RGIE self-check and PDF dossier. You model the spatial and electrical structure once and derive plans, lists and check findings from it. The PlanElec assistant carries out instructions in your own words, and recognition turns PDFs, scans and board photos into editable proposals. PlanElec is built first for electrical contractors and planners, and it is open to committed homeowners as well.

The workflow at a glance

At every step you can call on the PlanElec assistant: it works across the whole project model and has every change checked by the self-check.

One project model instead of separate drawings

In traditional workflows the same information lives in several files: the floor plan, the diagram, the board sketch and a spreadsheet. PlanElec stores rooms, devices, electrical connections, circuits, cables and protection devices in one linked model. Move a device and its position changes on the situation plan. Change its electrical connection and the topology and single-line diagram follow. You still review every result, but you no longer maintain unrelated drawings.

Build the floor plan and situation plan

In the floor-plan editor, you draw exterior and interior walls as a polygon, rectangle or individual wall segments. Closed areas become rooms that you name and classify. Doors, windows, stairs, dimensions, bathroom zones and multiple floors are part of it. An existing plan can be imported as an image, PDF or DXF underlay, rotated and calibrated against a known distance.

Recognise floor plan is faster: from a PDF, scan or photo (including a Trikker PDF export), PlanElec proposes walls, rooms with their area, doors, windows and supported device symbols. PlanElec reads the scale from dimension lines or the PDF scale, or you measure two points yourself. You correct the draft and import it into an empty floor; without a confirmed scale, the import stays locked. The article Recognise floor plans and boards with AI has the details.

Then you place electrical symbols on walls or freely in the room: sockets and switches, lights and spotlights, fixed connections and special equipment such as a heat pump or EV charger, junction and branch boxes, and boards. The situation plan uses exactly those positions. A 3D view is available to all users; on small screens or without WebGL, you keep working in the 2D views.

Plan with the PlanElec assistant

You describe a task in your own words, in Dutch, French, German or English, and the assistant carries it out. It works with more than 100 planning commands across the whole project model: floor plan, rooms, devices, circuits, switch chains, cables, distribution board, automation/KNX, PV strings and lighting control.

• Checked: after every change, PlanElec checks the project with the AREI/RGIE self-check.
• Reversible: every change is a single undo step and appears in the project history with the person who requested it.
• Confirmed: clear, reversible instructions run directly; risky actions wait for your confirmation. It never deletes projects.

The assistant answers technical questions with verified sources from the PlanElec help and the full AREI/RGIE text. The language model runs in the EU region; the AI provider does not store your requests or train on them. Read more in AI assistant for electrical planning.

Prepare repetitive planning automatically

PlanElec takes routine work off your hands. Every automatic step delivers a proposal that you review on its own:

• proposals for sockets, lighting, standard equipment and spotlight grids;
• automatic chaining of unassigned switches and lights in a room;
• cable segments from the topology and routes along the walls;
• automatic grouping and assignment of consumers to circuits;
• separate handling of supported special appliances; an EV charger gets its own protection chain;
• load distribution across several boards and phase balancing across L1, L2 and L3;
• automatic placement of protection devices on DIN rails with 20 percent spare space.

Automatic assignment places standard circuits behind 30 mA residual current devices and connects no more than eight final circuits to each of them. That follows the limit in AREI/RGIE Book 1, subsection 4.2.4.3.b, for residual current devices with high or very high sensitivity. Every proposal can be moved and reassigned; you add or override cable routes and lengths by hand. The guide Automatic planning shows the workflow in detail.

Plan the board and single-line diagram together

In the distribution board editor, you arrange the main switch, residual current devices (RCDs), circuit breakers and supported accessories on a real module grid. Protection devices are placed automatically, and you move or connect them by hand afterwards. With several phases, PlanElec shows the modelled loads and warns about a clear imbalance. Enclosure proposals take recorded module widths, spare space and accessories into account; with open data, they remain an estimate, not a thermal approval.

For existing installations, you upload photos of the board: PlanElec detects visible DIN modules with row, start position, width and type. You review the proposal and import it into an empty board. Hidden wiring is not visible in a photo; you define the electrical connections in the planning.

PlanElec derives the single-line diagram from the electrical topology. Consumer branches, protection devices, branches and cable data stay linked to the project model. When you change an assignment, the diagram is rebuilt from the current state. Missing or incorrect links stay visible instead of disappearing into a drawing.

Document PV, KNX and home automation

For photovoltaics, you assign strings to the inverter's MPPTs and document modules, DC protection, cable sections and frame PE. The same data feeds the single-line diagram, situation plan and material list. Missing string assignments or manufacturer data stay visible.

KNX documentation is available in a pilot scope: KNX power supply, switching and blind actuators, channel assignment and push buttons appear in the single-line diagram, and a missing supply, missing protection or overload blocks the final export. ETS configuration and group addresses stay in ETS. With an active automation profile, you also export channel and terminal plans, room functions, topology and quantities individually or as a home-automation handover dossier. More in Home automation and KNX in the electrical installation.

Which documents can you export?

All professional documents carry your approved installer details and, optionally, your logo. You archive the dossier in versions on the server: every page carries the same dossier UUID, a 40 mm QR sticker leads to the archived version, and a SHA-256 check proves the file's origin and integrity. This archiving confirms the file, not the AREI/RGIE compliance of the installation.

The material list breaks modelled assemblies down into quantities and shows them by category or room. Cable quantities are net lengths without an automatic waste factor. Known, partial and missing data are marked "Known", "Partial" and "Missing". Use the list as a basis for review and quotation; it is not an approval to order. Exporting documents describes the status of each document and the download steps.

What does PlanElec check against the AREI/RGIE?

The software-based self-check verifies a documented subset of the rules that can be decided from the recorded project data. It shows findings for supported areas and explicitly flags known coverage gaps and incomplete checks. A clean run means that, within the supported rules, PlanElec finds no error in your data. The report is your self-check, not a certificate of conformity; the official assessment is made by a recognized inspection body.

How large is that coverage exactly?

An installer asked us directly: does PlanElec cover all of Book 1, including every exception, or the most common cases? The answer: the most common cases, clearly delimited.

The integrated rule text is complete: Book 1, version 06, Parts 1 to 9, applicable since 1 April 2026. The automatic check logic focuses on protective measures, earthing, cable sizing and completeness of the file in a domestic AC installation. Of the fourteen chapters on special installations in Part 7, it touches three in part: rooms containing a bath or shower (7.1), supply of electric road vehicles (7.22) and domestic photovoltaic installations (7.112). Not included are the DC side with the L+, L-, M, PEM and PEL conductors and the transitional exceptions in articles 59 and 69 of the amending Royal Decree of 6 October 2025.

The full list of what the self-check does and does not verify is in the knowledge base.

Who is PlanElec for?

• Electrical contractors get one continuous path from survey to plans, lists and dossier.
• Planners model spatial and electrical relationships together and adjust alternatives traceably.
• Committed homeowners prepare an existing installation or a design in a structured way and agree the result with a qualified electrician before the work starts.

What does PlanElec cost?

During Early Access, you use PlanElec for 0 EUR, including the AI features within your personal AI allowance. There are no fees and no invoices. The future pricing model is on the pricing page, all prices excluding 21% VAT:

We will announce the start date of the paid plans in advance. If you register before then, you use PlanElec free of charge for the first full calendar month after the start.

A practical approval workflow

Treat every automatic step as a proposal with a named reviewer. Fix the building geometry and rooms first, then place only equipment that is really planned. Check switch chains and junction boxes before assigning circuits, because topology errors propagate into cable segments and the single-line diagram. Replace default values with real conductor and protection data.

At the board, check phases, upstream protection, RCD groups, spare modules and the electrical paths between devices. The grid arranges the modules; measured fault conditions, prospective short-circuit current, installation method and manufacturer limits are yours to assess as the professional.

Before export, run the self-check and read both findings and coverage notices. Green means the supported checks find no problem in your data. Then reconcile the situation plan and single-line diagram with the installed work and add measurements and manufacturer documents. The official inspection is carried out by a recognized inspection body.

Team handover and a clean revision

Decide per project who approves the floor plan, topology, board and comparison with the as-built state. Hand over open fields as open instead of filling them with plausible-sounding assumptions. The next person can then see whether a cable length was measured, calculated from the floor plan or overridden manually. The same discipline applies to appliance power, phase assignment and protection components.

An example: a dishwasher circuit is added in a kitchen. The change starts with the appliance on the floor plan, followed by the electrical connection, circuit, protection device, cable data and board position. The situation plan and single-line diagram are regenerated from the same state; you check that the new identifier matches in both documents. Instead of quietly replacing the old dossier, you archive a new version and note which circuits were added and what needs confirming on site.

In multi-board projects, you model the relationships between source and sub-distribution boards explicitly. Check which board actually supplies a circuit and whether the documents show the same hierarchy. Name unsupported parts of the installation in the handover so that nobody mistakes them for automatically checked.

This overview was checked on 5 October 2026 against the feature overview, the pricing page and the reachable editor and export workflow. If in doubt, the status shown in the product applies. Continue in the help center or with your free registration.