Re: "Doing" datasheets

From: Roger Lascelles (invalidl_at_invalid.invalid)
Date: 03/03/05 

Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 13:35:56 +1100

"martin griffith" <martingriffithX@Xyahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:c89c21pflea4ofnend1s49p434t2loao1k@4ax.com...
> I'm think of tidying up (my lack of) procedures in making data sheets
> and documentation.
>
> And again I'm a bit lost
>
> I lke the format that www.rane.com or Jim Williams's stuff on
> www.linear.com , ie text, PCB layout and schematics in the same PDF
> data***.
>
> How do I export/print to file diagrams from my Accel sch/pcb package.
> I can use a facility like pdf995 (printer look alike software) to
> produce a pdf file, that I can zoom into without loss of resolution.
> (the buzzword is Scalable Vector Graphics, according too google)
>
> I dont have micro$oft word, just wordpad and Open Office. OO is not
> exactly intuative, but can OO do this sort of thing? If so, how?
> Should I hire a typist? Do I have to blow the cobwebs off my
> creditcards? How many puns can John Woodgate find here?
>
> Thanks
>
>
> martin
>
> "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"
> Gandhi

Here is how I do it :

1. Buy Adobe Acrobat. It is not cheap, but you don't have to keep upgrading
it every year because the readers are backwards compatible. I have Acrobat
V4. Acrobat gives you a couple of printer drivers just like pdf995, so you
can extract output from any program. In addition, Acrobat lets you combine
separate PDF pages to form a single document, so you can grab your PCB
output and some text and combine them. You can also add those "bookmarks"
which let people navigate the document, although in V4 that is clumsy.
Acrobat lets you extract goodies out of other people's PDFs, often even when
you aren't supposed to - simply print out of Acrobat to its own printer
driver and open the new PDF !

Someone else suggested a different Adobe product which also produces PDFs,
and that may be worth investigating.

2. Buy MS Word. Last time I looked, Open Office was clumsy and
complicated, ran slow and got confused. Word is simple, overpriced and just
works. The beauty of Word is that you can copy and paste just about
anything into a Word document : bitmaps, EMF (Windows own zoomable graphics
format), jpg, stuff out of your web browser, printscreen, html. I copy and
paste schematics out of TinyCAD (freeware) as EMF into Word and add some
verbage. I copy and paste graphs out of AIM-SPICE into Word. etc etc. I
can then print the Word doc to the PDF printer driver. Unfortunately, Word
does not accept PDF - so eventually Acrobat is needed to combine separate
PDFs.

Roger