I LOVE VISIO!!!
If you have it on your computer, you should definately take the time to figure out how to use it. If you don't, you should consider purchasing it.
Visio is a powerful tool. In addition to those mentioned above, I will often insert a picture (such as FEA stress contour, etc) into the inserted visio object and dimension or annotate from inside visio.
-In word insert-object-visio drawing.
-Right click the visio object, click open vision object.
-In visio, say insert picture from file, browse and select.
Add necessary annotations, dimensions, more pictures.
You can crop and overlay pictures easily.
-In visio, pick page setup, scale to fit contents.
Exit visio.
This works great if you need to overlay pictures a certain way. You can insert one smaller picture on top of a larger picture (usufull RMB Commands: send to back, bring to front, group / ungroup annotations together or with pictures to allow quick resizing of certain portions of the figure), then proceed with adding text flyouts, dims, etc. The finished package is much easier to deal with than trying to do the same with just word, as this always leads to page scrolling issues. This approach is great for FEA, as you can create a figure with a much higher density of information than you could ever create using the fea package (ok, that you could create in a reasonable amount of time).
For simple sketches, drawing in Visio is much quicker and easier than trying to use acad or some 3d cad package. You can create a more accurate and detailed sketch than you could using the word tools you mentioned.
Good luck!
Good luck!
