Windows Program for Figures? - Arrows, Arrowheads, etc. (Oct/16/2004 )

Can someone tell me of a good program to draw good arrowheads, arrows, block arrows, etc? I was using illustrator but it's not that good. Thanks!

I think you ARE using the best program for drawing, but I must admit Illustrator is hard to learn. MS Office programs such as word and powerpoint are easy to master, but not sophisticate enough. Althernatively, you can try openoffice drawing program which is free at http://www.openoffice.org.

Illustrator and photoshop are the main program I use to produce figures for publication.

There are other programs such as smartdraw, etc.

Thanks twister. Yes, illustrator is a pain since there is no easy way to do arrows, block arrows, arrow heads, for histo figures. Ah well, continuing to search...

for drawing of one's own arrows and scetches, we use corel-draw a lot around here. the output files are vecor-graphics, which can be scaled in any direction without loss, so these are easily fitted for publications. arrows and different heads are very easily drawn with that program, too.

for the generation of figures out of raw date, we use sigmaplot, also fit for publication.

mike

illustrator can be a pain, but it is best in my opinion. for best image quality you can even do vector graphics (arrows, etc.) in an overlay in illustrator and then take the layer of the vector graphics and import that into photoshop as a seperate layer overtop of your photographic data, that way you get the best of both worlds.

I use Inkscape for my figures. It's an open source vector graphic editor. You can attach arrowhead to any line you choose so arrows are pretty simple.

I find the arrows in microsoft word are very easy to use and to format size colour type etc

If you dont know how to get them you.

Click on view tab at the top of the screen in in microsoft word

Then click toolbars

Then click drawing

A new toolbar should appear at the bottom of the screen

By clicking on the arrow in this new toolbar you can then draw one on your picture and figures

By right clicking on the arrow you have just drawn and going to format autosahpe you can chnage the size type colour etc

Once you are happy with the type etc. you can add more of the exact same arrow by right clicking on the arrow and copying and pasteing as many arrows as you want and adjusting their position and size for your pictures


hope this helps.

Cotchy.