RE: Visio Stencils for electrical and mechanical components?

Subject: RE: Visio Stencils for electrical and mechanical components?
From: "Dave Neufeld" <Dave_Neufeld -at- spectrumsignal -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 11:26:27 -0700


Try http://www.philipscsi.com/ProductTools/SystemDrawings/index.html

Found in a larger list of Visio stencils at:
http://www.mvps.org/visio/3rdparty.htm

After I did a Yahoo! search on "visio stencils"


I haven't tried these. I make my own stencils as I go along. I don't see why you'd need to ever hire an illustrator except where you absolutely need a 3D or perspective illustration. Most of the time I find a basic 2D drawing in Visio is easiest and best for a cabling diagram. I find that going for a fancy looking 3D drawing distracts from the clarity of the cable routing, not to mention being difficult to maintain.

I try to get the CAD drawings from the mechanical designer of the product, and then import them into Visio as a background layer. I then trace over the important bits I want in my illustration. Re-using the elements from the CAD drawing takes more hassle it seems...

If you can't get any CAD drawings. you can take a digital photo of the back panel (take it from as far back as possible to minimize perspective errors). Import the digital photo as a background and trace over the important bits...

ASIDE: "Illustrating Computer Documention" by William Horton is a great book of basic illustration principles, which stresses the keep it simple approach. Unfortunately, it seems to be out of print. Worth a read if you can find it.

david



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