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| Science Forum Index » Optics Forum » Reccommend a good lab drawing software... |
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| alex... |
 Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:01 am |
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Guest
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Hi,
I am fed up of spending hours using Paint to draw my figures in lab
report. Does anyone know of a nice and easy software to use? And to
make it releventish to this group it's for optics lab...
Software that allows me to create my own library of objects like lens,
beamsplitter, etc would be nice. What do you professionals use?
Thanks
ALex |
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| Helpful person |
| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 4:18 am |
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Joined: 22 Jun 2004
Posts: 832
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On Nov 6, 5:01 am, alex <aesbr... at (no spam) hotmail.com> wrote:
[quote]Hi,
I am fed up of spending hours using Paint to draw my figures in lab
report. Does anyone know of a nice and easy software to use? And to
make it releventish to this group it's for optics lab...
Software that allows me to create my own library of objects like lens,
beamsplitter, etc would be nice. What do you professionals use?
Thanks
ALex
[/quote]
I use Corel which has nice illustartive features. However, if I were
starting from scratch I would use one of the Adobe programs. Although
expensive they are generally considered the best universally used
illustration and publishing programs.
www.richardfisher.com |
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| Spencer Luster... |
| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 5:29 am |
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Guest
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On Nov 6, 5:01 am, alex <aesbr... at (no spam) hotmail.com> wrote:
[quote]Hi,
I am fed up of spending hours using Paint to draw my figures in lab
report. Does anyone know of a nice and easy software to use? And to
make it releventish to this group it's for optics lab...
Software that allows me to create my own library of objects like lens,
beamsplitter, etc would be nice. What do you professionals use?
Thanks
ALex
[/quote]
Hi Alex,
I have used a program called DeltaCAD for years and have been very
happy with it. As advertised, it really is very easy to learn. It
doesn't have the power of "real" CAD programs -- in particular lacking
3D capabilities -- but I can do 99% of what I need with it. Of course
you can save your drawings or elements to libraries, etc. for future
use. I have more than a 500 optical and opto-mechanical components
that I've drawn and collected over the years.
It's also *very* reasonably priced.
http://www.deltacad.com/
Nope, I'm not a shill for them. I have no connection whatsoever
except as a very satisfied customer for more than 10 years.
Spencer
============================================LIGHT WORKS, LLC
http://www.LW4U.com |
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| Zimmy... |
| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 8:19 am |
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"alex" <aesbrown at (no spam) hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:110d4533-8ff2-4fa0-bf44-c368c2392ae6 at (no spam) o10g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
[quote]Hi,
I am fed up of spending hours using Paint to draw my figures in lab
report. Does anyone know of a nice and easy software to use? And to
make it releventish to this group it's for optics lab...
Software that allows me to create my own library of objects like lens,
beamsplitter, etc would be nice. What do you professionals use?
Thanks
ALex
[/quote]
Any vector drawing or diagramming program could probably do it, Visio,
AutoCAD, etc. If you want to do ray tracing, etc. then there are programs
like Zemax.
Of course there is lots of free stuff too.
Z |
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| Dr. Eck... |
| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 8:33 am |
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On Nov 6, 11:45 am, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSensel... at (no spam) electrooptical.net> wrote:
[quote]Zimmy wrote:
"alex" <aesbr... at (no spam) hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:110d4533-8ff2-4fa0-bf44-c368c2392ae6 at (no spam) o10g2000yqa.googlegroups.com....
Hi,
I am fed up of spending hours using Paint to draw my figures in lab
report. Does anyone know of a nice and easy software to use? And to
make it releventish to this group it's for optics lab...
Software that allows me to create my own library of objects like lens,
beamsplitter, etc would be nice. What do you professionals use?
[/quote]
I've been using CorelDraw Essentials 2 for quite a while. If you do a
web search for CorelDraw Essentials 3, I think you'll find it quite
affordable. This is for 2D work.
If you want to step up to 3D, I'd recommend IronCAD Inovate. It's a
full 3D CAD program that is only stripped of it's ability to do prints
and sheet metal. It is really easy to use. If I need to create a
complicated geometry for use in TracePro, I create it in Inovate and
save it as a SAT file. This is TracePro's native format, so the
translation is perfect. I believe that import into LightTools would
work the same way, but I have not tried it. |
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| Phil Hobbs... |
| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:45 pm |
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Guest
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Zimmy wrote:
[quote]"alex" <aesbrown at (no spam) hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:110d4533-8ff2-4fa0-bf44-c368c2392ae6 at (no spam) o10g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
Hi,
I am fed up of spending hours using Paint to draw my figures in lab
report. Does anyone know of a nice and easy software to use? And to
make it releventish to this group it's for optics lab...
Software that allows me to create my own library of objects like lens,
beamsplitter, etc would be nice. What do you professionals use?
Thanks
ALex
Any vector drawing or diagramming program could probably do it, Visio,
AutoCAD, etc. If you want to do ray tracing, etc. then there are programs
like Zemax.
Of course there is lots of free stuff too.
Z
[/quote]
You might not believe this, but I do all my drawings using Freelance 4.0
for DOS. It's beautiful.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net |
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| Bob May... |
| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 4:31 pm |
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Guest
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There is also the free version of TurboCad out on the web. For raytracing,
probably the OSLO-EDU will do for most designs. Then again, it has a steep
learning curve. I've also got a very early version of Optics Lab which does
a fair job of being a windoz program and a correct ray tracing program. I'd
suspect that the latest version will be quite good.
--
Bob May
rmay at nethere.com
http: slash /nav.to slash bobmay
http: slash /bobmay dot astronomy.net |
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| John Sutter... |
| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 5:50 pm |
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Guest
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alex wrote:
[quote]Hi,
I am fed up of spending hours using Paint to draw my figures in lab
report. Does anyone know of a nice and easy software to use? And to
make it releventish to this group it's for optics lab...
Software that allows me to create my own library of objects like lens,
beamsplitter, etc would be nice. What do you professionals use?
Thanks
ALex
[/quote]
Adobe Illustrator and Microsoft Visio are good tools.
The Gimp has to be better than paint and free and I believe there
is a version with a UI similar to Photoshop now.
Inkscape is similar to Illustrator (but free).
Art of Illusion is a free 3D modeller.
-- John |
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| Joerg... |
| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 7:54 pm |
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Guest
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alex wrote:
[quote]Hi,
I am fed up of spending hours using Paint to draw my figures in lab
report. Does anyone know of a nice and easy software to use? And to
make it releventish to this group it's for optics lab...
Software that allows me to create my own library of objects like lens,
beamsplitter, etc would be nice. What do you professionals use?
[/quote]
A while ago I bought an older version of DesignCAD 3D. Cost me all of
$10 (ten ...). Oh, it's now up to $12.95 but much newer version:
http://store.purplus.net/cad3d.html
This place often sells older versions, probably from overstock or
liquidations. They also have TurboCad which I used way back in the DOS
days and was quite happy with. I use DesignCAD mainly to open AutoCad
files. Somehow for me as an electronics guy these programs are way too
powerful, almost like stepping into the cockpit of a large airliner with
a bazillion buttons, dials, gauges and whatnot around you. But it's
pretty cool to be able to rotate a sketch around in 3D fashion.
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM. |
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| alex... |
| Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 5:29 am |
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Guest
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Thank you for all your responses.... Being an ex dos programmer I
think I will try Phill Hobbs suggestion... Just cause I have a soft
spot for DOS. I'll get Coral Draw too just to cover bases...
Thanks... Sci_optics comes up trumps again
Alex
PS anyone know much about Levi-civita symbol?... All to help sovle
Maxwells equations...My tutor is a German sadist..  |
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| Phil Hobbs... |
| Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 3:36 pm |
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Guest
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alex wrote:
[quote]Thank you for all your responses.... Being an ex dos programmer I
think I will try Phil Hobbs suggestion... Just cause I have a soft
spot for DOS. I'll get Coral Draw too just to cover bases...
Thanks... Sci_optics comes up trumps again
Alex
PS anyone know much about Levi-civita symbol?... All to help sovle
Maxwells equations...My tutor is a German sadist..
[/quote]
Epsilon ijk is also known as the completely asymmetric tensor--the
elements are 1 when i, j, k are a cyclic permutation of 1,2,3 (i.e.
1,2,3 2,3,1 or 3,1,2); -1 when i, j, k are an anticyclic permutation
(i.e. 3,2,1 2,1,3 or 1,3,2) and zero otherwise (i.e. when any of the
indices is repeated).
Dead useful for electromagnetics--much easier than futzing with the
right hand rule or 4-vectors during some computation.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net |
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| Jürgen Appel... |
| Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 5:11 pm |
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Guest
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Hi,
alex wrote:
[quote]Thank you for all your responses.... Being an ex dos programmer I
think I will try Phill Hobbs suggestion... Just cause I have a soft
spot for DOS. I'll get Coral Draw too just to cover bases...
[/quote]
Since you have a soft spot for software with a little ancient user
interface, I dare to recommend xfig (http://www.xfig.org/, there should be a
win32-version out there somewhere, too) to you.
It even comes with a library for symbols of optics elements (a few lenses,
mirrors, fiber couplers, piezo mounted mirror, ...) and is famous for
producing really nice (almost human readable) and _small_ eps and pdf files.
As a rather simple program it does not have fancy features like color
gradients or 3D-functions but I found it perfectly adequate for experiment
setup drawings and to combine and arrange multiple graphics into one plot.
Together with the pstoedit-software you can even use it to import and edit
eps as vector graphics.
[quote]PS anyone know much about Levi-civita symbol?... All to help sovle
Maxwells equations...
[/quote]
Another feature: With xfig you can use LaTeX-Code for labels and then use
latex to render the formulas into the picture - this ensures that the labels
really look exactly the same as in the captions in your Thesis.
[quote]My tutor is a German sadist..
 [/quote]
Good luck,
Jürgen |
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| George Herold... |
| Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 10:39 am |
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Guest
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On Nov 6, 5:01 am, alex <aesbr... at (no spam) hotmail.com> wrote:
[quote]Hi,
I am fed up of spending hours using Paint to draw my figures in lab
report. Does anyone know of a nice and easy software to use? And to
make it releventish to this group it's for optics lab...
Software that allows me to create my own library of objects like lens,
beamsplitter, etc would be nice. What do you professionals use?
Thanks
ALex
[/quote]
I use a product called EasyCad. It came bundled with DOS way back in
the 80's sometime. About 10 years ago I broke down and purchased the
upgrade so that I could print my drawings... (The old dot matrix
printer died and...) I'm sure real CAD users would find the interface
a bit clunky, but it's a 'shoe' that has become very comfortable for
me to wear. I'm also a bit reassured that it's still supported after
20+ years.
George H. |
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| krokodyle... |
| Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:33 pm |
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Guest
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"alex" <aesbrown at (no spam) hotmail.com> wrote
[quote]I am fed up of spending hours using Paint to draw my figures in lab
report. Does anyone know of a nice and easy software to use? And to
make it releventish [sic] to this group it's for optics lab...
Software that allows me to create my own library of objects like lens,
beamsplitter, etc would be nice. What do you professionals use?
[/quote]
Using Paint is obviously not very efficient, you must be exceedingly
patient. :-)
For myself Autocad and Solidworks (old versions in both cases, the new
stuff may be pricey), of course just for drawing and not for any lens design
or calculations.
Google Sketchup is free and appears capable of doing simple stuff and more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SketchUp
The output can be in many formats. I am curious and will try it myself. |
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| krokodyle... |
| Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 3:04 pm |
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Guest
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"krokodyle" <[e^i*pi=-1] at (no spam) euler.com> wrote
[quote]Google Sketchup is free and appears capable of doing simple stuff and
more.
[/quote]
Oops, the pro version is *not* free ($500), my apologies.
My enthusiasm was premature, sorry. :-(
But the pared down version still is free and may be worth a look.
http://sketchup.google.com/product/whygopro.html |
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