How to draw figures and diagrams?

[Alexanddros81]

Hi!
I have been doing some reading over the past 5 months on spacecraft dynamics and physics mechanics -dynamics . I want to create figures and diagrams such as those found in Orbital Mechanics by Curtis, Vector Mechanics for Engineers by Beer and University P|hysics by Young. Which software do I use?
Most probably I will be inserting figures and diagrams in OpenOffice or Microsoft Word
thanks

 

[Simon Bridge]

You use whatever drawing software you are most comfortable with. Vector drawing software for preference.
The software you will be using to write with is not relevant... though you should save finished work in a widely implimented iso format (ie not MSWord).
Note: professionals like those cited do not do their own illustrations. Publishers hire professional technical illustrators.

 

[andrewkirk]

I suggest using an open-source drawing program rather than MS Word, provided you will be doing the work at a place where you have that software available to you. That will maximise the number of different formats in which you can save the drawing. I sometimes use LibreOffice Draw, which I understand is almost identical to OpenOffice Draw, having forked from it a few years ago. they are vector-drawing programs. LibreOffice can save in many widely-used formats like svg, png and gif.

 

[Fervent Freyja]

GeoGebra is awesome, it's mathematics and geometry based! You can easily switch dimensions to run diagrams as simulations! Works decently with touch and you can download the phone app as well. I imagine it would work great for physics-related drawings too! It takes a while to learn, I'm still tinkering with it!

 

[Promytius]

Simon - what is an example of "a widely implimented iso format (ie not MSWord)" I have notepad and Word.

 

[FactChecker]

GeoGebra is awesome, it's mathematics and geometry based! You can easily switch dimensions to run diagrams as simulations! Works decently with touch and you can download the phone app as well. I imagine it would work great for physics-related drawings too! It takes a while to learn, I'm still tinkering with it!

This morning I downloaded GeoGebra, watched some youtube tutorials , and played with it some. I am impressed.

 

[Fervent Freyja]

This morning I downloaded GeoGebra, watched some youtube tutorials , and played with it some. I am impressed.

I know, there are many things that you can do with it! It's often used between students and teachers, but it's great to play with and when you are self-studying as well!

There are quite a few physics-related worksheets and simulations showing up in search results (you can download and edit work shared by others too, just go to 'open file from geogebra' in the app):
https://www.geogebra.org/search/perform/search/physics/type/ggb

 

[Simon Bridge]

Geogebra appears to be open source though it has special restrictons for commmercial use.
https://archive.geogebra.org/static/publications/2006-FOCUS_suzuki.pdf

Examples of "widely implemented" ISO formats would be ISO/IEC DIS 26300: Open Document Format; and, ISO 32000-1:2008 : Portable Document Format. There are good free software implementations for these.

There are openXML to ODF converters for MS Word, and there are Acrobat plugins too ... or just use Libre Office or OpenOffice.org, which write to any well-documented format you like by default.

Note: Academic publishing usually accepts LaTeX as a defacto standard typesetting markup thingy.

 

[demon]

I recommend Inkscape. It takes some time to learn all its features (among other things because there are many), but it's very powerful. And it's free, open source and multi-platform!