Engineering Diagrams in Word

[2ndThermoLaw]

Hello All,

has anyone come across any tools (be it an extension in Word or external program) to draw 2-D engineering diagrams (eg gears, free body diagrams.... the kind you hand sketch) easily and quickly. Atm I'm using stuff in Word and Paint or projected views from 3d drawing... pain at times...

 

[IRstuff]

Why not draw by hand and scan it in? Seiko used to make a notepad with a built-in scanner for Palm devices.

Any more complicated, you'd need Visio, or Turbocad, etc.

TTFN

 

[PSE]

Generally what I do is utilize any useful CAD program etc. and then screen dump it into something like paint. It can them be cut/pasted into your word document. If you can get something looking good on your screen, you can eventually get it into word. If you are starting from scratch, I agree with IRstuff, a scanner can be very useful.

Regards,

 

[JEB66]

I have used PDF Creator to do this. You print to a PDF and then you can insert the file/picture.

See thread724-100318 and the entry for sept 19, 2004 to get a free copy.

 

[DickRussell]

If your drawing needs are met by Visio, then you can do the following.

1. Create the drawing in Visio. Then click Edit/Copy Drawing.

2. With Word open, click Edit/Paste Special and from the list of objects select Microsoft Visio Drawing Object. Once the drawing is in the Word document, you can actually select it and do further editing on it.

 

[Mech151]

I LOVE VISIO!!!
If you have it on your computer, you should definately take the time to figure out how to use it. If you don't, you should consider purchasing it.

Visio is a powerful tool. In addition to those mentioned above, I will often insert a picture (such as FEA stress contour, etc) into the inserted visio object and dimension or annotate from inside visio.

-In word insert-object-visio drawing.
-Right click the visio object, click open vision object.
-In visio, say insert picture from file, browse and select.
Add necessary annotations, dimensions, more pictures.
You can crop and overlay pictures easily.
-In visio, pick page setup, scale to fit contents.
Exit visio.

This works great if you need to overlay pictures a certain way. You can insert one smaller picture on top of a larger picture (usufull RMB Commands: send to back, bring to front, group / ungroup annotations together or with pictures to allow quick resizing of certain portions of the figure), then proceed with adding text flyouts, dims, etc. The finished package is much easier to deal with than trying to do the same with just word, as this always leads to page scrolling issues. This approach is great for FEA, as you can create a figure with a much higher density of information than you could ever create using the fea package (ok, that you could create in a reasonable amount of time).

For simple sketches, drawing in Visio is much quicker and easier than trying to use acad or some 3d cad package. You can create a more accurate and detailed sketch than you could using the word tools you mentioned.
Good luck!

Good luck!

 

[bpeirson]

I would attempt to use excel and its chart function.

As an example, for a standard gear every corner (end of line) could have its X,Y location calculated based on diameter and number of teeth. This would be easiest using polar coordinates which would have to be converted to planar coordinates. Put the planar coordinates into a scatterplot with the points connected and you would have a picture of a gear. Use active formula to calculate the points and by changing the value in the diameter cell the chart would immediatly show a new gear.

 

[johnwm]

I would recommend Visio, which is designed for drawing.

Good Luck
johnwm
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[DaveVikingPE]

Screenshots or captures from a .pdf pasted into a Word document as a picture works best for me.