a few Visio symbols

I use an old version of Visio. I also do optical layouts with it. I copy and paste mirrors, beam splitters etc. Once you've got all the bits it doesn't take long to layout a different circuit. I like that you can go in and rotate some part by any angle.

George H.

It depends on how thin the paper is it's printed on. :)

Truthfully, I was never a big fan of Visio, but a trusted engineering colleague swears by it. Must be a generational thing...?

Dunno. Some people use Open Office Draw, which I tried and didn't like. And I tried a couple of official "drawing" programs that were awful.

Autocad doesn't export very good line work to Word.

John

I'm sure Adobe Illustrator (aka Frustrator) is excellent if you use it a few hours a day or more.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Problem is, I don't use this sort of thing much, a few hours a month maybe, mostly manual illustrations. I found Visio pretty easy to use (well, by comparison...)

John

My Gonzo utilities, of course

"The Journey is the reward"

eff.com- Hide quoted text -

I really wish I could get my money back for Illustrator 10. It is truly amazing they can even sell a piece of s*it like that.

On my version, at any moment, without any warning whatsoever, it would absolutely REFUSE to save your work, no matter what you tried. But, would be fine in all other respects. Well, if you discount how difficult it is to use in the first place, that is.

I have been using Visio for many years, and still use a pre-microsoft version for much of my documentation and dimensioned drawing. I have done several A/V design in it, laying out the room and its actual dimensions, actual suspended ceiling layouts, etc. I have also done rack layouts and block diagrams. I really like that you can literally embed visio drawings in Word, where they are still edittable for when changes to a proposal or documentation needs to be quickly.

Charlie

You can also copy and paste drawings from Visio directly into Word. Saves a lot of hassle. I used to save as wmf first (Microsoft's own vector format).

Hmm, Well I've using an older version (3.0) and it won't let me open your parts drawing.

Sigh, George

I'm using Visio 2002! Cheap on ebay.

John

Someone in the office has a newer version that I could use. I'm kinda a Luddite when it comes to software. I just hate 'upgrading'.

George H.

Me too. People keep changing things, often for no good reason, removing N bugs and replacing by N+5.

John

Freelance 4.0 for DOS. Greatest drawing program ever. It produces decent Postscript, but of course since it dates from 1989ish, it only lets you have about 10 colours. OTOH that's all I ever need for line drawings.

A script or two, or the wonderful ImageMagick 'convert' program, will make the PS into any format you like.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I use Universal Document Converter which can "print" from any CAD or graphics program I've ever used. I usually "print" to a PNG, pastes right into Word beautifully... good readability and definition. Made easier if you avoid newer versions of Word :-) I prefer Word 2000. ...Jim Thompson

In this case, Luddite =3D hassle free operation. So called "upgrades" usually end up breaking things that worked before, often for no, or very little, appreciable advantage. I no longer allow my computer to upgrade anything on its own.

Probably not vector. If you want decent drawings in your documents you should stick to a vector format drawing. The number of vector formats is very limited.

Freelance puts out nice vector Postscript, so converting it to EPS is trivial. That gets me where I need to go, unless I'm doing BrainDrain, i.e. PowerPoint.

It has one or two bugs that prevent it from being the One True Drawing Program: when you move a curved object, it doesn't snap to the grid properly, and there's some roundoff error in the mouse handling that makes it fiddly to align things exactly at high zoom ratios. However, it's quick, good, has a complete set of keyboard shortcuts, and doesn't have a lot of annoying limitations.

A lot of late DOS programs were like that--they catered to power users far better than the GUI versions.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

"John Larkin" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I have have Visio 5. There are a lot of generic symbols and making new ones is easier than creating Blocks. I use it a lot for cable assembly drawings. Works great for flowcharting too.

Cheers