Publication Quality Electronic Circuits

[Pulse Cloud]

Hello,
I need to be able to create publication quality circuit diagrams, i.e., I need something to make beautiful schematics.

I've spent the whole darn day trying to get Circuit Macros to work, but I just can't and I'm so mad I could smash every wall in my house with my bare fists.
Look at how beautiful these are. And you can make them PostScript or PDF or whatever you want - which is great for LaTeX.


Now, is there some program that can make stuff like that?
Preferably something easy to use: even though Circuit Macros looks great, it's all programming - which is harder than using a WYSIWYG package...



Thank you.
BTW: This is extremely urgent...

[Jon Chandler]

You might look at TinyCAD.  It's open source and pretty simple to use.

Here's a brief writeup I posted at Digital-DIY.  You can see some examples of its output there:

TinyCAD - An Open Source Schematic Capture Program

[Pulse Cloud]

Thank you, Jon, but the output of the program you linked to looks too much like the output of other packages like Altium Designer, EAGLE, et al.

I rather want something that would look great on an article published by some AAA magazine or journal or whatever - like Circuit Macros (why can't I get it to work ffs!?).

[amspire]

What you are after is a 60's textbook style that is not practical in normal use now, because we just have to cram so much more detail in a schematic.

You can get exactly the style you want using any 2D Cad package. You may have to make your own component models, but there are libraries available for programs like Autocad, and some may be done in the style you want.  Once you have a library of models, you can draw circuits in a good 2D Cad program almost as easy as a Schematic capture program. You just won't get things like netlist generation that the Schematic packages do so easily. (Not completely true - there have been Autocad packages configured for PCB design with netlist generation, but they tend to be not great.)

There are many low cost or free alternatives to Autocad, and they would be fine for this as it is a basic task.  All you need is a way to do a high quality render print to Postscript and bitmap image.

Richard

[Pulse Cloud]

@amspire: Well, which program did they use to make those 60's textbook style schematics? (hah)

[scrat]

The style of my school textbooks and of many datasheets (especially National ones) is very close to the drawings you posted, and this makes me think there is a common aestetical sense (or, at least, convention) about electronics schematics. A good looking schematic eases its comprehension, IMHO.

I wondered many times why they don't replicate that look in the schematic capture programs, but maybe the graphics motor of the most common of them is quite old, and it could become too slow if quality would be raised too much. It's also not so trivial to find out which are the real differences between a tool producing beautiful schematics and one not able to. It's impossible to have good looking results with, for instance, OrCAD, while I've seen neat drawings made with, IIRC, Altium Designer. But which are the differences in the drawing? The blurring of the edges? Rounding of some corners?

I'd try a completely different approach, like using Visio or other vector graphical tools. Longer to do, but you can achieve a good result. That's what my colleagues do when publishing.

[Pulse Cloud]

Thank you scrat. I've thought about Visio, but I don't really like it that much.
I've found something that just might be what I've been looking for, though: XCircuit.

Its User Interface (the GUI, the keyboard shortcuts, the way you actually place stuff, the way you save, etc.) is pretty darn terrible, but after you learn how it works it's not so bad. I've also faced a couple SegFaults hahaha.
Basically it generates a PostScript graphic, which I then convert to PDF and embed in my LaTeX file. Works and looks great!
I can also fix anything if I want to (eg: alignment) with Adobe Illustrator, too.

Attached is a PNG'd (with Illustrator) image of one of the example files.

[IanB]

It looks like you have found yourself a solution, but really I think you could use any ordinary drawing program you like; there is no need for specialist software. Here's an example I did with MS Paint, which is just about the simplest software you could use:



That's a bitmap of course, but if you need nicely scalable output you could use Inkscape and SVG. If you want pretty, Inkscape will let you draw pretty.

[blackdog]

Hi Puls Cloud,

I use sPlan7 to draw schematics, its easy tu use and low in price.

http://www.abacom-online.de/uk/html/splan.html


This is a schematic i draw of a voltage reference...
www.bramcam.nl/REF-VRE3050-Amp-01.JPG

You can export also to 5 different filetypes.

Kind regarts,
Bram

[johnboxall]

Ah blackdog you beat me to it - sPlan7 is great.

Out of curiosity I asked Silicon Chip magazine what they used - turns out it's Corel Draw with a huge custom library.

[westfw]

I would suggest learning how to use a real CAD package (diptrace, EAGLE, whatever.)   Those will actually do design checks, are useful for modification, and can export postscript or other standard graphics, and the "prettiness" of your symbols is limited only by your ability to hack libraries and do image postprocessing (but probably isn't awful to start.  Is this so bad?  EAGLE postscript output, no hacking.)

[alm]

Learning how to use real EDA tools is separate from publication quality schematics, in my opinion. Sure, you should use EDA tools for design and manufacturing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you should use the same tools for publication.

I wouldn't use that figure in a publication, and I'm sure a professional DTP designer will see even more issues. The font is an ugly vector font that does not belong in a publication. Equations are not correctly formatted. No use of subscript. Lines are too thin. Label orientation is inconsistent. Plus sign is absent from one of the caps. I'm sure some of these can be fixed in Eagle or in post processing, but I don't consider this usable as is.

[Rufus]

Sure, you should use EDA tools for design and manufacturing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you should use the same tools for publication.

Possibly it does. Schematics are not printed to be read by DTP designers they are printed to be read by engineers, engineers who might prefer them to look like the schematics they work with every day.

[alm]

DTP designers are trained to optimize a design to be easy to read and pleasing to the eye. This applies as much to engineers as to other people. Just because I consider function more important than form doesn't mean that I want the form to be ugly.

[Rufus]

DTP designers are trained to optimize a design to be easy to read and pleasing to the eye. This applies as much to engineers as to other people.

No it doesn't. Not being EEs they don't have a clue about what makes a schematic easy to read or pleasing to the eye.

Most of the schematics the OP linked and described as beautiful are faulty and ugly (dotted 4 way junctions, junctions with no dots, ICs with no pin annotation, AC voltages described with + and -).

The 'pleasing to the eye' DTPification of schematics published in EDN has annoyed me for decades.

[alm]

Most of the schematics the OP linked and described as beautiful are faulty and ugly (dotted 4 way junctions, junctions with no dots, ICs with no pin annotation, AC voltages described with + and -).

Just because there are flaws in those schematics doesn't mean they should use the ugly style of EDA software like Eagle. I'm not advocating letting a designer draw your schematics, but that doesn't mean you have to ignore all their input.

[buffalo960]

I'm not sure if anyone else noticed this but it appears that there is some sort of markup language when you click on the images.

Is this relevant?

http://ytdp.ee.wits.ac.za/cctpng/IdealDiode2.txt

[Bored@Work]

I'm not sure if anyone else noticed this but it appears that there is some sort of markup language when you click on the images.

This is the whole idea behind Circuit Macros.

The mistakes in the schematics aren't due to the tool. They are just an incarnation of the old "garbage in, garbage out" rule.

[westfw]

"garbage in, garbage out"

That's one reason I'd rather have output from a real schematic capture utility.  Certain types of errors it will catch for you.  Other errors wouldn't (hopefully) be present at all if you were using a WORKING set of files (used for production) rather than something drawn to be pretty but suffering from several iterations worth of "translation" from the original.

It shouldn't be impossible to get prettier schematic diagrams out of EAGLE.  The whole output driver is pretty much re-writable, and that's not including the possibilities of ULPs and the new XML-format data files.  I suspect the main problem is that "publication quality" is not really very well defined (ok, what font SHOULD I use?  What's a minimum reasonable line width? ...)

[slateraptor]

I suspect the main problem is that "publication quality" is not really very well defined (ok, what font SHOULD I use?  What's a minimum reasonable line width? ...)

On the contrary...

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi

[westfw]

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi

"The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" does not appear to be relevant to the discussion at hand.   We're talking about schematics, not "quantitative data."

[slateraptor]

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi

"The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" does not appear to be relevant to the discussion at hand.   We're talking about schematics, not "quantitative data."

Judging a book by its title, are we?

[westfw]

No, I read the synopsis and looked at the sample page, too...  And the ToC and pages on Amazon.

The classic book on statistical graphics, charts, tables. Theory and practice in the design of data graphics, 250 illustrations of the best (and a few of the worst) statistical graphics, with detailed analysis of how to display data for precise, effective, quick analysis. Design of the high-resolution displays, small multiples. Editing and improving graphics. The data-ink ratio. Time-series, relational graphics, data maps, multivariate designs. Detection of graphical deception: design variation vs. data variation. Sources of deception. Aesthetics and data graphical displays.

Does it really have much info on things like schematics?  I'll defer to someone who's actually read it, of course.

[alm]

It shouldn't be impossible to get prettier schematic diagrams out of EAGLE.  The whole output driver is pretty much re-writable, and that's not including the possibilities of ULPs and the new XML-format data files.  I suspect the main problem is that "publication quality" is not really very well defined (ok, what font SHOULD I use?  What's a minimum reasonable line width? ...)

I'm not a designer or a font geek, but a proportional true type/open type font with professional hinting would be a start. Even something simple and bland like Helvetica. Plus properly typeset equations (like LaTeX produces). This is something that packages aimed at design/typesetting tend to be much better at than CAD packages with their crude vector fonts that only include ASCII symbols.

[l4rtt-1]

Try SchemeIT. It's on every computer that has an internet connection and web browser. It's easy to use, fast and the schematics looks pleasing to the eye.

http://www.digikey.com/schemeit?wt.mc_id=PressRelease