Software for making Physics charts and chemistry charts?

[christian0710]

Hi,
What software could you recommend for making complex physics and chemistry charts (for better overview) like the following 3 examples?


Exapmple of SI. Units in physics
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/i/SubwayDiagram.gif

Chemistry chart
http://masterorganicchemistry.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/bigpicture1.jpg


Chemistry oxidation ladder
http://masterorganicchemistry.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/oxidation.png

 

[DennisN]

Hi christian0710,

personally I actually use Photoshop for such things, but you could have a look at some vector graphics editors (a comparison is here), personally I have used e.g. CorelDRAW and/or Inkscape. Inkscape is free and available here. I don't do much graphics nowadays, so somebody else may have other better suggestions, perhaps, I don't know.

 

[wukunlin]

I believe it is also possible to make them in LaTeX, but I'm not sure how practical that is.

 

[adjacent]

I believe it is also possible to make them in LaTeX, but I'm not sure how practical that is.

I don't think you can make this using latex

 

[AlephZero]

I don't think you can make this using latex

You could do it with the pstricks package, or (probably better) use Asymptote to generate the graphics plus all the capabilities of LaTeX for the typesetting.
http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/

There are LaTeX packages to draw the chemistry diagrams in the other two examples, but I'm not a chemist. http://latex-community.org/know-how/434-chemistry-molecules

 

[adjacent]

You could do it with the pstricks package, or (probably better) use Asymptote to generate the graphics plus all the capabilities of LaTeX for the typesetting.
http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/

I would rather do it using Microsoft paint. Doing that with latex will take too much time.

 

[AlephZero]

I would rather do it using Microsoft paint. Doing that with latex will take too much time.

The problem with doing something like this in MS paint is that "what you see is all you get". If you need to change the format, or make it fit on a different shape of paper, you probably have to start again.

On the other hand with LaTeX you are not drawing the picture, you are writing a set of instructions to draw the picture. Most of that diagram is repetitions of a box with text inside and more text surrounding it. Define how to draw that pattern once, and you don't have to do much more than type in all the text.

It's easy to make the lines join the correct boxes, and automatically stop neatly at the edge of the circles etc, even if you change the layout. OK, you will have to route some the more wiggly lines between the text yourself, but you don't have to do that "carefully" with a mouse, just define a few points and let the software draw nice looking curves..

LaTeX is a lot more powerful than just "something for writing math equations".