diagramstikz-pgf
I am trying to draw some wiring diagrams with the pinouts (see image below) possibly using Tikz. Do you know any package or example that could help me to do this?
Particularly, the big boxes with lines coming from each paragraph seems to me very difficult to execute with the tipical tikz commands.
Actually the library snakes has been superseded by decorations, but for your need I think you are just looking for decorations.pathmorphing.
Thus, your code revised, is like:
\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathmorphing}
\tikzset{snake it/.style={decorate, decoration=snake}}
\begin{document}
\vspace*{2cm}
\begin{center}
\begin{tikzpicture}[thick]
\path [draw=blue,snake it]
(-4,0) -- (-2,0) -- (2,0) -- (4,0);
\draw[draw=blue, snake it] (2,0) arc (0:180:2cm);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{center}
\end{document}
Notice that I grouped in a single style snake it the keys that really set up the decoration decorate and the one that sets the type of decoration decoration=snake.
For further details, you can have a look to section 72 Decorations and more specifically to section 30.2 Path Morphing Decorations on the pgfmanual. (section 48.2 in pgfmanual 3.0)
Update: Improved code, and explanations and more examples added (after the first figure).
This is a "craftsman" solution, in which I fine-tuned a bit the control points for the bottom of the pit.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathmorphing,calc}
\begin{document}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathmorphing,calc}
\begin{tikzpicture}
% Define some reference points
% The figure is drawn a bit bigger, and then clipped to the following dimensions:
\coordinate (clipping area) at (10, 7);
\clip (0,0) rectangle (clipping area);
% Next reference points are relative to the lower left corner of the clipping area
\coordinate (water level) at (0, 6);
\coordinate (bottom) at (5, 1.3); % (bottom of the pit)
\coordinate (ground1) at (0, 5); % (left shore)
\coordinate (ground2) at (10, 5); % (right shore)
% Coordinates of the bigger area really drawn
\coordinate (lower left) at ([xshift=-5mm, yshift=-5mm] 0,0);
\coordinate (upper right) at ([xshift=5mm, yshift=5mm] clipping area);
% Draw the water and ripples
\draw [draw=blue!80!black, decoration={bumps, mirror, segment length=6mm}, decorate,
bottom color=cyan!60!black, top color=blue!20!white]
(lower left) rectangle (water level-|upper right);
% Draw the ground
\draw [draw=brown!30!black, fill=brown]
(lower left) -- (lower left|-ground1) --
(ground1) .. controls ($(ground1)!.3!(bottom)$) and (bottom-|ground1) ..
(bottom) .. controls (bottom-|ground2) and ($(ground2)!.3!(bottom)$) ..
(ground2) -- (ground2-|upper right) -- (lower left-|upper right) -- cycle;
% \draw[dotted](0,0) rectangle (clipping area);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}
Result:
Some explanations:
The figure is drawn bigger than the area shown, then it was clipped . This makes easier to draw the water and to remove the borders of the ground. In order to clarify this, you can reveal the clipping area by removing the line starting with \clip and adding at the end of the figure the line:
\draw[dotted](0,0) rectangle (clipping area);
You'll get:
I made great use of intersection coordinate system, i.e.: the syntax (node1|-node2), meaning "the coordinate located at the vertical of node1 and the horizontal of node2, that is, located at (node1.x, node2.y) (if this syntax were possible in tikz)
I defined a number of "reference points" to make easier the customization of the figure. For example, the figure can be made assymetrical changing the y coordinate of ground2, For example:
\coordinate (ground2) at (10, 3); % (right shore)
(See the result after the following bullet)
The origin (0,0) is located at the lower left corner of the clipping area, so that it is easier to add labels at specified points, but you can also use the named coordinates (bottom), (water level) and so on, and use relative coordinates to achieve greater simplicity and flexibility. For example:
\draw[>=stealth, <->] (bottom) -- (bottom|-water level) node[right, midway] {7m};
\draw[>=stealth, <-] ([shift={(-3mm,-8mm)}] ground2) -- +(-1,2) node[above] {Plateau};
The result of adding these lines (and also changing the vertical position of (ground2) is the following:
Best Answer
Here is a nice way to make wires diagrams using the
matrixlibrary to align and connect everything easily. Connecting the wires is a bit of try and error but laying out the blocks is very easy!The Output:
Note: there are a few entries that have more than one wire, then, to separate the wires, border anchors were used separting the wires with 40°. Other case when this is used is to dislocate wires that are over each other. If the lines crossing each other are unacceptable use the syntax adapted from A:Intersection of 2 lines not really connected in TikZ as shown in the MWE, it's not very straightfoward but works.