How do I export my schematic design to a presentation?

Summary

After designing a schematic you may wish to use the design in presentations or other documents. This article describes how to export your design to other applications.

Choosing the Export Method

There are several methods of exporting your schematic graphically. SIMetrix can output to vector based graphics systems, PDF and compressed bitmap images. The vector based outputs will give you the greatest control over the size of the resulting image, whilst the bitmap images are for quick image generation.

If you are wanting to output an image into a presentation or document using an application within the Microsoft® Office family of products, we would advise exporting using a WMF vector image that will scale well in these products.

Exporting a Vector Image (WMF)

The WMF format provides a scalable image that works well within the Microsoft® Office family of products. To export using this method:

1. Select the elements in the schematic that you want to export. By default, pressing Ctrl-A will select all elements in the schematic.
2. Right click on the schematic to bring up the context menu, and click on Copy. Alternately, by default you can press Ctrl-C to copy the selection.
3. Go to the application you want to export the image to and use the applications Paste method, typically this will be Ctrl-P. An image should appear of the schematic you wanted to export.

If you have exported the image into a Microsoft® Office product, then by clicking on the image in that application, it should give you the ability to resize the image as required by dragging the corner of the image.

If you have exported the image into an application and either nothing appears or the resulting image is of poor quality, then you should next try exporting to PDF.

Exporting to PDF

The PDF format is widely compatible with other products and provides another vector scalabale image representation of the schematic. Exporting to PDF will always export the entire schematic and will also export any highlighting made by elements that are currently selected. To export to PDF:

1. With the schematic open and in focus, go to the menu: File | Save as PDF...
2. A File Save dialog will appear, choose the location and file name to save to and press Save.

Exporting to Other Image Types

Schematic files can also be saved to bitmap formats and the vector format SVG. If you require a vector based image, we recommend trying the WMF vector export and PDF export first. To export to other image formats:

1. With the schematic open and in focus, go to the menu: File | Save Picture...
2. A File Save dialog will appear. Choose the file type to save as from the drop down box at the bottom of the dialog marked Save as type.
3. Choose the location and file name to save to. Ensure that the file extension (for example .png, .jpg or .bmp) is also given when saving to a bitmap based image.
4. Press Save.