Program for colour wiring diagram wanted

[Guest]

Hi,
Can anyone suggest what program can be used colour the wires in a wiring diagram.

Thanks and appreciated.

[79FiveFifty]

i am proficient in photoshop... if you show a sample of the diagram i may be able to help you out.

it really depends on how much detail you're after and how well the drawing is done, or if it needs to be re-done on a computer from a pencil sketch or something.

[Matchless]

I have noticed that some people have coloured the mono motorcycle wires in the actual colours. The program needs to be able to overlay the black line with any colour or combination of colour. White wires, black/white, orange/red etc also needs to be shown.

Basically even a program that allows everything to be redrawn in a higher resolution in colour or completely drawn from scratch??
Someone mentioned Adobe Illustrator, but I have never looked at it.

Is this possible in photoshop?

Thanks

[SqDancerLynn1]

Most of the wiring diagrams are in the service manuals. they are already in color.

[Matchless]

I wish I had all my wiring diagrams in colour, but most are on my PC and some are very low resolution.

I recently helped a friend out on a Honda where the wiring was completely messed up and it would have been nice to quickly colour the wires I was tracing and print out on my colour printer.

Hopefully I could even find out which PC program works best to draw up a complete diagram from scratch. Those I have looked at always seem to fall short somewhere.

[Nessism]

I have several original Suzuki factory service manuals and none have a colored wiring diagram. I'd love to put my hands on some as well.

[waterman]

I believe the Clymer's manuals have the colored wiring diagrams. Maybe not all, but I am sure their 650 manual is in color.

[Steve]

Most of the wiring diagrams are in the service manuals. they are already in color.

I believe the Clymer's manuals have the colored wiring diagrams. Maybe not all, but I am sure their 650 manual is in color.

Many of the older manuals are in color, but they are trying to save a few pennies on printing costs, the newer ones are simply black and white.

.

[Ponderosa]

Delta Cad

I have used Delta cad on large projects..

[Macguyver]

MS Paint

If you have the black and white image then all you need is MS Paint, built into windows.

To open, click on the "Start" button, highlight "Programs", highlight "Accessories" and choose "Paint" from the list.

On the tool palette on the left side, choose the straight line tool, and change the line thickness to whatever will cover the original line, choose your color and you're off to the races.

HINT: Hold down the Shift key to draw straight lines on 45 degree increments, this way you can put color over the black/grey lines without having to obscure them by having the mouse cursor directly over them once you have started them.

Open the wiring diagram, and copy it by right clicking on it and selecting "copy".
-or-
Press and hold the "ctrl" key, and press the "c" key to copy.

Switch back to paint, and paste the wiring diagram in, Paint will resize the canvas to the proper size to fit what was copied automatically.
-or-
Press and hold the "ctrl" key, and press the "v" key to paste.

It's hard to explain, but once you try it, you will get it.
I have done a couple wiring diagrams for cars this way, and it works great. Simply program to use, yet very versatile if you know your way around it, and very easy to learn. Photoshop would be a little overkill for what we need here. Like using a broadsword to cut butter. Which is fun, but not needed when a butterknife will do.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. If people think a tutorial is needed, I will gladly do one up. I did photo and image retouching stuff like this for years as part of my multimedia job, and MS Paint is one of the most under-rated pieces of software out there for simple stuff like this.
I knew my multimedia degree would come in handy one day!

I hope this helps,

[mriddle]

It would be tedious to do .. but Excel has the capability of layering colored lines .. you can also pattern them (red diagonal stripe as example)

[sschering]

I've used Excel.. It does a good job and scales without distortion unlike a paint program.
You can also draw up connectors, bulbs whatever.. group the image into 1 object then copy paste and even re-size where you need it..

For this type of drawing a vector graphics program like corel draw or adobe illustrator is the way to go but really Excel is just fine.

It would be cool to make one with layers for each circuit so you see just the wires you wanted.

[Matchless]

If you have the black and white image then all you need is MS Paint, built into windows.

To open, click on the "Start" button, highlight "Programs", highlight "Accessories" and choose "Paint" from the list.

On the tool palette on the left side, choose the straight line tool, and change the line thickness to whatever will cover the original line, choose your color and you're off to the races.

HINT: Hold down the Shift key to draw straight lines on 45 degree increments, this way you can put color over the black/grey lines without having to obscure them by having the mouse cursor directly over them once you have started them.

Open the wiring diagram, and copy it by right clicking on it and selecting "copy".
-or-
Press and hold the "ctrl" key, and press the "c" key to copy.

Switch back to paint, and paste the wiring diagram in, Paint will resize the canvas to the proper size to fit what was copied automatically.
-or-
Press and hold the "ctrl" key, and press the "v" key to paste.

It's hard to explain, but once you try it, you will get it.
I have done a couple wiring diagrams for cars this way, and it works great. Simply program to use, yet very versatile if you know your way around it, and very easy to learn. Photoshop would be a little overkill for what we need here. Like using a broadsword to cut butter. Which is fun, but not needed when a butterknife will do.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. If people think a tutorial is needed, I will gladly do one up. I did photo and image retouching stuff like this for years as part of my multimedia job, and MS Paint is one of the most under-rated pieces of software out there for simple stuff like this.
I knew my multimedia degree would come in handy one day!

I hope this helps,

I have looked at paint, but could not find a way to do multi-coloured wires. Is it possible?

[Macguyver]

Not quickly...

Unfortunately the only 2 ways I know of in paint is to do the main color, and then run a single thin line of white over the main color, or do several smaller white lines in a hatch pattern over the main color.

I know, it's a tedious task, but think of all of the time it will save in the long run. If it seems not worthwhile to you, then maybe paint is not the program for you.

Perhaps Paintshop Pro would be a nice intermediary step between Paint and Photoshop. It will do dashed lines, and feels similar to paint, except with tool palettes and many more features. It also is a bit steeper of a learning curve, but would be easier to grasp than photoshop for this purpose. It was made by Jasc software, and was excellent, since then, Corel has unfortunately bought Jasc and tried to turn it into a poor man's Photoshop, making it much more complex than it should be IMO.
On the upside, they do have tutorials on their website which would help cut some steps into the learning curve for you.
www.jasc.com will get you where you are going.

I just did a search for a paint-esque program that will do dashed lines, and ran across this:

http://www.heliospaint.com/

It looks like it should do the trick, I just downloaded it and it seems like a really slick solution. Once you find the various tool locations it was really easy to do a dashed colored line, and if you hold the "ctrl" key down, it will do straight and 45 degree angled lines just like paint. Except you can go back and select the keypoints on the line and move them. Brilliant!

I think we have found a winner, and I think I have found a new defacto paint program!
Did I mention it is FREE!
Within a minute of opening the program I did this:

[Matchless]

.

.

http://www.heliospaint.com/

It looks like it should do the trick, I just downloaded it and it seems like a really slick solution. Once you find the various tool locations it was really easy to do a dashed colored line, and if you hold the "ctrl" key down, it will do straight and 45 degree angled lines just like paint. Except you can go back and select the keypoints on the line and move them. Brilliant!
.

Macguyver,
One of my problems is that I have upgraded to Windows 7 and many older programs do not run on it.

I have just tried Helios paint and it seems like it can do the changes and the multi coloured lines also seem OK. If there is no other specific program then this will do nicely. Thanks for the find.

I am still hoping that there is some special program that can be used easier to draw up a complete wiring diagram. SPlan has a feature where you have two colours, you select the colours and which one is broken, dashed or whatever and then you draw the wire once.

I have not tried doing it in Excel, but there seems to be some possibilities there. Unfortunately I could not find the Eraser in Excel that works so well in Paint and Helios paint.

I wonder what program is used for doing this for the factory and after market manuals?

Thanks for your input!