Hello guys,

I just came upon your site, and I must say, I'm quite impressed of what I encountered, and the number of people that are visiting it. I hope to be welcomed, find response and make this site an enjoyable place to pass my time. But, let's get to the point.

I have this project to prepare for a study at my university and I find difficulties visualizing my data. There are some math stuff and other, that I need to give a picture of.

Specifically:
I managed to take some decent graphs of several functions, with mathematica, after a lot of hard effort and headaches, using the documentation. But when it comes to more "free" drawings, it can be really painful. You can't possibly to give specific coordinates of every little thing you put on. And after that, I need to draw some circuit diagrams and schematics.

And yes, I know I have several options, but none fits me , and some of them can be really ugly. I must know who designs those software and for whom . They have absolutely no sense of style or point of view . Or they just boring when they work . The bad thing is that the list includes some great and high programs.

If any of you knows anything at all, please let me know.

Thank you, in advance.

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Generally I use Power Point for general drawings and system/block diagrams.

CB

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Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.

Giordano Bruno

CB thank you for your response.

And yes, I know about powerpoint. Very nice curves and printed very well.
But there is a but . You can't have any precision at all! You just make and assemble the separate pieces. With the eye.

Not to tell you how much important it is.

And the same way, you can go to illustrator or coreldraw and do the same things. But on some occasion you will need to declare a slope or a distance or something else...

We have:
matlab
maple
microsoft math
sketchpad
geogebra

They are all disappointing. Only mathematica succeded to satisfy me, but it is a pain in the ass.


And don't make me tell you about designing circuitrys. Here we have eagle, and maybe several other less known, along with microsoft visio and smartdraw. EVERY one has at least one flaw. Most of them are TRULY ugly, others have one component at a specific thickness and another one being thicker (or more thick, i don't know), maybe a problem with the connecting lines, others with an awkwardness in positioning things on the grid, and so on...
I didn't manage to find a satisfactory library.
I eventuated to design to own components in visio. Another lost day. And more are about to come.


Am I the only one that sees those things? And maybe a dead end.
Am I asking too much?
Am I just weird?

Please tell me what it is.

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Depending on what you want to present and for what purpose, the\LaTeX package TikZ might be helpful. Since I've got used to it, I use it for practically everything. If I need to plot a complicated function, I let Mathematica sample a couple of points and copy&paste the coordinates in my .tex-file and feed them to TikZ.

Edit: By the way, I agree with you on the lack of style in the output of practically all the software I have ever used. Since I use TikZ I am finding myself judging research ideas by their potential for fancy graphs.

But wait a minute. Now that I took some fresh air and snapped out of it, I realized that in illustrator I do have these options.
But too much effort for almost nothing.

Guys I'm too tired. I've searched, tried, and worked a lot. I didn't managed to find anything desirable. And it is sad when you think that neither a person nor a company has succeeded in creating a decent product. Even microsoft, in office and visio, has so many problems.

I came to one conclusion: You can't rely on anyone.
When you need results, you always have to work alone.

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Woahhhh, I didn't know anything about LaTeX.
There are so many documents to read about, but I don't have time to elaborate. I read some in wikipedia, about a typesetting system and this Knuth guy having about the same problems with me, but that's all managed to retain in my mind.
And the same with the files for download. Plenty.
I downloaded some, along with the PGF/TikZ package Zarathustra mentioned, and I tried to find any exe to install. Probably, that's not what I should look for, cause I didn't find anything.

I can't ask you to tell me what's going on with all this stuff, but I need someone to guide me about the files I need, and help me get my machine ready.
I will probably figure the rest out.

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The problem with LaTeX is not that one cannot find enough help online, the problem is that there is too much help, and that basically everybody tells you something different.

What I recommand is (if you run Windows) to download MiKTeX from MiKTeX Project Page and a good free Editor for LaTeX which does not come with MiKTeX. I recommand TeXnicCenter, which you can download from http://www.texniccenter.org

Then download some general tutorials for LaTeX. Just google around a bit. LaTeX and TikZ both have steep learning curves, but it's worthwhile.