Figures for Papers / Presentations

[VanWyk]

I need to simplify a few schematics to include in papers and presentations, and I want to cut out all the extraneous detail that is only needed for "real" schematic capture.  For example, I want a clock to just be a circle with a single cycle square wave in it, and an op-amp to just be a triangle with + and - terminals.  Basically, I want to make whiteboard schematics cleaner than I can draw by hand.

What tools do you folk use to do this type of documentation?  I've been snipping pins off of Altium symbols, there has to be a better way!

[SimonR]

Couldn't you just change the colour of  the pins so they don't show up when you print the screen or otherwise caputure to bit of schematic you want.
Any good Schematic/PCB CAD tools will allow you change the colour of every individual aspect as it helps to clarify things when you are drawing something complecated.

I don't use Altium but its a pretty good profesional system so I would of thought you had control over what is visible.

[Yansi]

https://www.proficad.com/ maybe?

[stmdude]

It's not often I need to do this, but when I do, I resort to using Microsoft Visio

[Yansi]

I do this occasionally too, but by using a mspaint/pbrush and a set of prefabricated symbols :-)

[T3sl4co1l]

I do that, then print to PDF.  The figures have to be cropped from the sheet outline, but many figures fit on a sheet, usually.



An excerpt from such a schematic.  The symbols are from my library, but I've disabled the supply pins, pin numbers, and am abusing the designators freely (as you can tell by the wavy red lines; they don't print to PDF so that's fine).

If you need better synchronization between schematic source and documentation output, I suggest... drawing better schematics. 

For example, your clock source can be an off-sheet connector or port, with a self-explanatory name, and a waveform or squiggle or text above it, if you like.  Use multi-sheet or hierarchical design methods to simplify each sheet down to its most basic elements: make each sheet its own figure!

There are plenty of things to go wrong by trying to dumb down a schematic (all that "real schematic capture" data!), or fork a simplified version; but there is absolutely nothing wrong with cleaning up your schematics so they are self-documenting, or nearly so!

Tim