The paper reports on concept and application of HICADEC-E, the electrical design system in shipbuilding, which is one of four subsystems of “HICADEC”. This system can deal with electrical design tasks interactively or in batch mode through three dimensional data model and can generate design and production drawings such as electrical diagrams, equipment/cable way arrangement drawings, wiring drawings and outfitting material drawings, electrical cable management information as well as production control information. Based on the open data base concept data communication between this system and the other subsystems is automated, especially in handling graphical data used for background drawings in the electrical production drawings.