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engineering report software.
2

engineering report software.

engineering report software.

(OP)
I get a lot of field reports from other engineering companies that have pictures included with the report. Some of these have a way of marking up the pictures to add notes and details to the picture. My question is, what software does this? Can it be done with Microsoft word? Its usually a arrow or circle on the item in the picture and then pulled off for a note, added.

master ICC inspector, AWS CWI

RE: engineering report software.

Yep, basic Word. Insert|Shape. Text box for the text.

RE: engineering report software.

MSWord has its uses, no doubt. In some cases though the editing is awkward, and then you've go to manage all the little shape doo-dads inside your document. Grouping, overlays, Send to Front / Back, text wrapping...all that stuff.

I've used SnagIt from Techsmith.com for years for advanced image annotation for technical documentation.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering
www.bluetechnik.com

RE: engineering report software.

I edit the images before putting them into the Word document. MS Word cannot edit the text as I want it to, or I simply don't know how. I edit the image and add my text in GIMP ( http://www.gimp.org/ ) an open source image manipulation software. I use it to blur areas, add masking, more complicated shapes... most importantly, I use it to put a black or white border around all my text to make it more legible. I hate reading a report with black text on images that make the text difficult to read even under magnification.

The attached image has been shrunk down ~50% so it doesn't mess with the forum layout too much, but here's a recent example. This isn't the BEST example since any solid-colored text would show up decently well, but it shows the outline I describe. It does make a big difference.



So, long story short: I use MS Word for all of it, but I do MOST of my annotation in a proper image editor. I save an "original" version of the image and an "annotated" image in case revision is required.

_________________________________________
NX8.0, Solidworks 2014, AutoCAD, Enovia V5

RE: engineering report software.

For real simple stuff, or if you have patience you can annotate quite well with just Paint - though again editing is an issue is you mess up.

Seems to me older versions of Word were better at annotating images in a way that allowed easy editing etc. but may just be user issues.

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What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?

RE: engineering report software.

I use WORD and embed the photos in pre-sized tables, then I annotate with objects and text. Pretty quick to do and easy to edit.

RE: engineering report software.

One of the best image mark up programs, which I've used for over twenty years is a program called SnagIt by TechSmith.. https://www.techsmith.com/snagit-features.html

Anything that displays on the computer screen from any source, can be captured and marked up to your pleasure.. and saved in a variety of formats.

RE: engineering report software.

image mark up program (FREE OF CHARGE !!!!!) : "Faststone image viewer" and "Faststone screen capture" at www.faststone.org

RE: engineering report software.

FastStone is great. I too use it extensively.
But the one which offers greatest verstality is VISIO.
I can size the image to it's true scale.So it looks much more crisp and professional.

RE: engineering report software.

I know a lot of people use LaTeX to do scientific/engineering reports. I haven't used it, but it's common, free, and very powerful. You will have to learn the scripting language though. If you have to do a lot of formulas/math it is much easier than using Word's equation editor for everything.

I have a few friends that swear by it.

https://www.latex-project.org/

RE: engineering report software.

Using embeded images in autocad and a tiff printer works well too, for more complicated markups.

RE: engineering report software.

silentbobo941,

I have used LaTeX for projects at home. It is very convenient to export LaTeX to HTML, to PDF and to RTF. It does not have the capability to manage graphics other than by embedding them.

If you are interested in Free Software, the GIMP has the ability to place editable text on top of your photographs. These can be saved as JPEGs and embedded in LaTeX, Libre Office or Microsoft Office documents.

--
JHG

RE: engineering report software.

I have spent many hours pulling my hair out trying to do complex layouts in MS Word, but found that if I paste graphs and tables as images instead of linkable objects life gets so easy that it has been years since I resorted to PhotoShop to build a complex page.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

RE: engineering report software.

Some days just marking up the aircraft with a non permanent marker and taking a pic works quite nicely too (I tend to do this when I have to measure up a feature on the aircraft).

It's obvious but I don't see it done often.

RE: engineering report software.

As another option I use Visio for marking up images.

RE: engineering report software.

Create a PDF of the image and use Acrobat to mark up.

RE: engineering report software.

The Snipping Tool in Windows accessories comes in handy sometimes. It's great for cropping images of anything on the screen like maps, etc. Only problem is that writing, making arrows, and highlighting with the mouse can look a bit crude.

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