About Ecado
Ecado Ltd is based in York and was formed in 2000 to provide Microstation Training and Consultancy alongside other technical solutions to clients in the UK rail industry. Our simple goal is to provide our clients with technical solutions that optimize the effectiveness and efficiency of their design teams.
From our strong foundation in Microstation and CAD in general, the company has also concentrated on developing additional skills in web & intranet design, document management systems and Information Technology to ensure our services continue to meet and exceed our clients' expectations.
Clients

Microstation Training
Through our training portfolio, we offer clients more than generic off-the-shelf courses. We consult closely with our stakeholders to ensure that all course modules target the CAD skills that will have an immediate benefit when delegates return to their base offices, and we are always happy to customize the training to ensure the best fit with design team's requirements. Our course list and content is constantly evolving and growing to match industry developments.
Microstation Consultancy
We also offer a range of consultancy services to clients using Microstation J, V8, XM and V8i, specialising in the development and customization of Microstation to improve efficiency and standardization for multi-discipline, multi-project engineering environmnets.
Our consultancy solutions range from short term problem-solving and workflow streamlining, through to more extensive CAD standards and adherence initiatives, as well as CAD software upgrades, deployment and migration strategies.
If you suspect that any of the following apply to your design processes, please feel free to contact us to discuss ideas and solutions:
- Our CAD system does not allow the design team to toggle between different disciplines and project folders and have all the required resources and paths instantly re-mapped.
- We're pretty much using the shipped version of Microstation.
- We start off most drawings by copying over the most similar drawing we can find from a previous project.
- We struggle to consistently produce drawings that comply with our clients CAD standards.
- Most of our design team come from an AutoCAD background and we've never been able to get Microstation working for us the way we'd expect with AutoCAD.
- We do not have a managed set of approved and readily-avaliable CAD resources (cell libraries, seed files, standard drawing types) to use in our project work.
- We waste a lot of time on everyday tasks like printing.
- Our client is asking us to supply drawings in Microstation format and we do not have the in-house expertise to do this.
- Our quality checks continually highlight the same non-compliances in our deliverables.
- We find ourselves working through the same processes on batches of drawings and suspect that these could be automated to save us a lot of time.
- We would like to upgrade to a newer release of Microstation but do not want this to cause disruption to our projects.
- We would like to have our CAD system to do so much more for us but cannot afford or justify employing a full-time Microstation CAD Manager.
Testimonials
"Superb Course."
David Child, Network Rail, York"Thanks so much. I really enjoyed the course."
Fiona Ng, Network Rail, Birmingham"A very well taught course with a good tutor who was always willing to help. Excellent."
Peter Goodall, Network Rail, York"It amazed me how the CAD package could be tailored to our particular needs."
Geoff Brown, Signalling Projects Manager, Translink- Courses
- Advanced Microstation V8
- Advanced Microstation V8 XM
- Advanced Microstation V8i
- Introduction to Microstation 3D V8
- Introduction to Microstation 3D V8 XM
- Introduction to Microstation 3D V8i
- Basic Microstation for Project Engineers
- Basic Microstation for Signalling Design
- Network Rail ISP - Intelligent Scheme Plans
- Scheme Plan Development using Westinghouse Plans
- Scheme Plan Development using Balfour Beatty Plans
- Customized Microstation Training
- Microstation Consultancy
- Microstation Configuration
- Microstation Workspace Development
- Microstation Interface Development
- Microstation Cells and Cell Libraries
- Microstation CAD Standards Documentation
- Microstation CAD Standards Compliance
- Microstation Processes and Workflows
- Microstation for Multi-User and Multi-Project Environments
- Microstation Programming and Batch Operations
- Microstation Printing Solutions
- Tutorials
- Quick Snap and View Commands
- Repeat Operations
- Combine Keyins
- Plotting Keyins
- Controlling the Microstation Design File Order
- Managing Microstation Multi-user CAD Environments
- Setting Up Microstation for Multi-disciplinary Environments
- Eliminate Pre-drawing time in Microstation
- PJL-Printer Job Language
- Microstation Maintenance in multi-user CAD Environments
- Extending Microstation Font Libraries
- Microstation Design Libraries (DGNLIB)
- Microstation Design History