Create schematics with Paint!

So you have an idea for a project and want to post a article here on eham.net and want it to look nice but you don't have a CAD program to do it and you don't really want to spend the big bucks just to draw simple Electronic Symbols to be used it your article that no one is going to pay you for. Well my friend I have the perfect program for you if you use a PC running Windows. The program is called Paint! Yes, the simple little paint program that comes with Windows. Granted your not going to use it to produce huge and complicated schematics of a NASA gizmo but for something like an antenna tuner or RC filters Paint will work just fine. First of all you will need a sheet of Symbols to work from. The easy way to do it would be to use a scanner to import the Electronic Symbols from the page of a book on electronics. Below is an example from a very old book I ran across at a thrift store.

I used a scanner and saved it in Windows BMP format and placed it in a folder called Symbols. The above picture is called tubes.bmp. You will want to produce many more pages like transistors.bmp, switches.bmp, capacitors.bmp and so on. You will also want to use the same book to produce all your Symbols so they come out the same uniform size. After you have your files saved your ready to start drawing.

To start with you need to produce a rough sketch of the drawing. I do this by hand on paper with a pencil. This allows you to figure out the best way to lay it out. After you have the rough drawing finished your ready to use Paint to start drawing your finished product. Bring up an instance of paint and set the attributes that will allow you to place the complete drawing when finished on it. Here it's ok to go larger than required and make the drawing smaller later. Next you start placing your Symbols on the page. The easy way of doing this is to start a second instance of Paint and load the required file in it. A good example is the tubes.bmp file. You need to add a Tetrode to the page so you load the tubes file and using the Select tool outline the Tetrode tube and then right click it and select copy. Now move back to the main instance and from the menu bar click edit and then paste. The Tetrode tube will appear in the upper left hand corner of the screen and from here just left click and drag the image where you want it and release the left mouse button. While the select box is around it you may rotate and invert, as you need with the Flip/rotate tool. That was easy enough! Below is the Tetrode that was copied and pasted on the main page.

Just keep on with the copy and paste until you have all the different Symbols on the page to produce your schematic. One helpful hint is to work out from the middle and use connecting lines as you go. Also hit the save button regularly so if the computer locks up or blinks you don't lose a lot of work!

If you build something you should always document it properly and using Paint will allow you to do that in a professional way. You might want to sell it later and having a professional looking schematic will go a long way in helping to do that. I built a small two-tube amplifier using 811A tubes for the 160-meter band. It worked very well and those 300 watts it produced was enough to get my received signal strength above the high noise level during the summer months. After I purchased a Heathkit SB-1000 amplifier and repaired it I no longer needed the small 811A amplifier. A trip to a Hamfest with the amplifier for sale on the tailgate provided a learning experience on homebrew projects. No one would buy the amplifier without a schematic and parts list even at the low price of $75. As soon as I got home I got busy and produced a schematic, parts list, and operating instructions. The next Hamfest that rolled around that I went to had the 811A amplifier on the tailgate again but with professional looking documentation to go with it. It sold for $150 that day!