I'm curious what the pros use to make custom lighting diagrams for use with prontoedit. Are there any shareware/free galleries or cad programs that are helpful? A full search of the forums only revealed a few messages, the most helpful said to use windows paint! There must be an easier way...

adam


This message was edited by on 07/01/02 18:11.43.

Grasshopper: When you have mastered Microsoft®Paint, then, it be time for you to leave.
Paint is cool for a free program. I've got Visio 2002 over XP Pro and I still find myself in Paint all the time. Visio is too regimented for me. Do your fonts in Word and bring them into Paint rather than living with Paint's weak text tool. Steal things from WordArt and get things like arrows from Word's drawing tools. You can bring those over too.

grasshopper? Does that somehow refer to the fact that I forgot to enter my username in the last post?
Anyway, I will play around with paint some more and see what I end up with.
Thanks for your advice - its still surprising that there isn't a utility to achieve this result. I thought someone in the pro forum might havea better way.

adam

Apologies agh98, but don't get your feelers bent; I tend to give out nicknames. Since these forums already have so many self-given nicknames I lay off a bit, but I also tend to alter them to (IMHO) suit the moment. Admittedly I did not notice that you had "No Logo".(See this thread for the implied joke.)

Grasshopper refers to the television show 'Kung Fu', of which even the reruns have been cancelled. (Ultimately saving my wife her peace of mind.)

RE: Paint-
When I got my first PC I had no Office suite whatsoever, and while I was weening myself off my PowerMac I had no idea what to buy, so I learned what was there. Many people who are extremely familiar with Micro$oft's products think I'm the bomb with Paint. Often someone will ask "What did you use to draw that?", and when I say Paint their eyes widen.

I say all this not to build myself up, rather to say to you that Paint is not a trash program just because it was free. People dis' Paint a lot. I became "fluent" in Paint because that's all I had at my fingertips. Play with all the buttons, and don't cheat yourself out of "Paste Opaque" and "Paste Transparent", each will help you in specific situations. NEVER fail to go to the Help Index; not everything's in there, but you CAN often get help. (Take the "fluff-words" out of what you want to do and search on the Web too!)

You can open .jpeg's, .gif's, .bmp's, some Adobe files, all through paint. Once you've got 'em in Paint, their YOURS to butcher. You can trim 'em and slice 'em. You can copy most of those things from web pages and paste them right into newer versions of Paint. If you have an older version you may have to "save picture as:", and then open it in Paint from wherever you saved it. Freeware Web buttons from developer sites? They're all yours to desecrate at will for Pronto use.

Rather than try to draw small "lined" arrows and brackets (or any formatting or punctuation), get it up on a document in Word (or even WordPad), size it, color it, and then highlight and copy it to Paint. Select it tight, and paste it transparent right on top of your button or icon you've drawn up to represent a lighting can in the ceiling, or some such architectural doo-dad.

Isolating objects: You can select and edit the background color to white leaving only the object. By doing this you effectively trim off all the pheripheral content and are left with just the object, with none of the manual cropping that was necessary in older Paint versions.

This IS a bit archaic, but I typically like to open a two or three instances of Paint. Depending on what I'm up to, one will be the working drawing, one might be just a "holding tank" for images I just grabbed, and one will be a toolbox full of shapes I use repeatedly, or am in the process of editing.

(You got'sta have the RAM & Mhz to open Paint in multiple instances, AND surf for images, AND edit in Word, AND check email, AND check Webmail, AND post to Remote Central, blah, blah, blah simultaneously, and a good video card is just a plus in any case.)

Is there better stuff? You bet; my son-in-law works for Disney in graphics and animation and he won't touch a PC for his work. I know people who will only use SGI for art. You can also get double-throwdown, time-and-a-half, over-and-under, double-barrel programs for your PC, but Paint's free, and therefore, Paint is your friend.

If you need any more tips we'll go offline and quit eatin' up drivespace on RemCen's server. But if you are to become Shaolin, practice is the path you must follow.

Sensei,

The feelers are regaining their original composure. Thank you very much for the clarification of both the nickname, and the paint ideas... you've certainly given some great tips for us all to run with.

I'm a long-time windows user but have never played much with paint. If it can do all you say, it certainly is more powerful than I thought. The pronto-programming addiction is returning and this could certainly be another long night!

Again, your help is most appreciated and I'll post any sites with good graphics, etc. so that others might benefit from my effort.

adam/grasshoper.

I don't have any fancy paint programs either. What I have done is use programs like Visio (have it for work) and Powerpoint. I create the image (a lot of room layouts for camera angles) in those programs and then cut and copy into paint

Good advice Anthony; Visio is certainly better suited to structural and technical drawing than Paint. You'd wear yourself out doodling up little likenesses of "known shapes" that probably already exist in some plug-in for Visio. I didn't actually know why I spec'd Visio and Powerpoint when I bought my last PC, I had the full Pro suite PLUS at work, and didn't want to be hamstrung at home. I ended up swindling a deal on Visio, good thing too - Micro$oft's a little too proud of that product pricewise; ALONE Visio cost's more than an O/S.

Adam-san, the bottom line is that wherever you get/create your desired picture, you can put the frosting on the cake in Paint. If the resolution elves are on your side you could size pictures of a manufacturer's keypads and put them at the end of the wiring runs. You could take digital pictures of the actual lighting cans from an "ant's view" perspective, crop the ceiling away, and paste them at the end of their respective runs. If you're willing to tinker Paint can be manipulated in a lot of ways.

If you see a lighting diagram that you wish you'd drawn, but it's got other features that don't exist in your situation, or too many runs, you can take it into paint and start carving out the useful elements and storing them in a "toolbox" drawing. After some rehashing, cutting and pasting, and some expletives, you'll have spent more time for the same result as drawing it from scratch ; p

If you already had better programs you'd be a fool not to use them - If you get good enough with Paint and you're getting your desired result in reasonable time, you probably wouldn't feel the need to buy extra software.