Making Schematic and Wiring Diagram

PlaneTeeR

Hello everyone,

I was wondering what parallax uses for a program for making their schematics and wiring diagrams.

I need to make a wiring schematic and want to do it like parallax does.

Thanks

Johnny Kuiper
Holland

Jon Williams

For our pretty schematics in books and documents we use Corel Draw 12, then export as required by our graphics folks. For the schematics that I whip up for posts here, I use ExpressSCH (part of the package from ExpressPCB.com) as it's quick and easy.

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Jon Williams
Applications Engineer, Parallax

Paul Baker

For the schematics ExpressSCH is one of the easiest to use as Jon has recomended. For the wiring diagram, any drawing program that supports object oriented drawings would suffice (keeping components of drawing individually accessable greatly eases editing and modifications. Adobe Illustrator is such a program, Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft's Paint are not), the key is finding importable graphics for the components you want to use (breadboard, piezo speaker, etc).

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PlaneTeeR

yes, is there a package with these object (components)·or something, i can get the adobe Illustrator.

Johnny Kuiper
Holland

Paul Baker

I tried for a while and couldn't find anything that perfectly fits the bill, these are the two closest I could find, the first is more for schematics, the second is clipart at a viewpoint that isn't top down.

http://www.mines.uidaho.edu/~glowbugs/tubepad1.html
http://www.topline.tv/topart2.cfm

You may be forced to create your own by creating diagrams for each component, then incorporating them into another figure. Time consuming to say the least. Or finding them individually, also quite time consuming.

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Paul Baker

Ok here's a semi-shortcut, You can find datasheets for various components at places like Digikey, such as this one for a resistor: http://rocky.digikey.com/WebLib/YAGEO/Web%20Data/CFR%20Series.pdf

at the bottom of the first page is a drawing of the resistor:

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Using Alt-Print Screen to grab a copy of the window and pasting it in a non-object oriented photo editor (I used MS Paint because its the only one I have access to at the moment (Photoshop is easier to work with)) erasing the labeling and isolating the bars (for easy coloration later) and saving it as a gif to reduce the range of colors (make the black bars solid black for ease of flood fill coloring·(paint bucket)·(required in MS Paint, but in Photoshop you can set the amount of color variation for the paint bucket)) produces a blank for incorporation:

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Then you can use the paint bucket to color in the appropriate color values for the resistor bands before including in your wiring diagram:

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Finally if you are using a program that permits you to save your GIFs with a transparency (Photoshop does, but not MS Paint, so I didn't do it for the example), paint the entire background in a color you wont use in the image (magenta is a good color) and set that color as the transparency color, that way when you incorporate the image only the component itself will be there and the background wont interfere with the breadboard picture.

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Post Edited (Paul Baker) : 1/30/2006 10:29:29 PM GMT

Steve Joblin

I use Microsoft PowerPoint to create my wiring diagrams... Here is an example of a project board I am working on...

Paul Baker

Ok heres a blank resistor with transparency its in png (a patent free alternative to the gif format), ask if you want directions on how to create transparency in Photoshop.



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PlaneTeeR

Thanks Paul for all the tips and files.

I will make the wiring diagram as soon as possible.

Johnny Kuiper