Label and Meter Face software

[Glen Orr]

I am looking for software to design and print custom meter faces, labeling around potentiometers and switchs, etc. for my electronic projects. Can anyone help me?

[dice45]

Glen,


any CAD software will do and there are a lot avaialble as shareware or freeware. Advantage in comparison to a painting program: CAD uses vector based graphics and its output will be an exact scale. You can draw your faceplate and print it scale 1:1 and it will exactly measure in reality like it does on the screen. In a CAD drawing you can measure around within the drawing and get precise results. And it has drawing aids helping you to draw exaclty, an intersction or the center of a cirlce will be exactly where you specified it.





I glue CAD printouts on sheetmetal to have scales for panel meters and i also use printouts for strobe disks used for speed checking of my turntable.





Sorry, forgot, CAD means computer aided design, main use are technical drawings. Maybe other users can hint particular sowtware, i am out of this market for too long, i use Pro/Engineer and AutoCAD which are expensive, professional software packages.





AutoCAD for instance has a mighty programming interface called AutoLISP which i master to some degree, i plan to have AutoCAD print plate characteristics of my tubes measured by a Fluke 123 and transferred to the PC as value tabulars. Maybe you get your hands on a decentralized safety copy of AutoCAD although i warn you, this might be considered illegal by some , but that's your bad conscience, not mine, and i would offer help in case you need it.