Mimic board easy program required

[Newportnobby]

In Excel, it's Insert, then Shapes, then Rectangle. Once the shape is inserted, a right click will bring up the option to select the colour.

Just tried that and it's easy to create uprights and lengths but how do you create diagonals please?

Will it let you rotate an object?
If so, create a horizontal line then rotate it.

Can't see a way to do that, Chris, but I am only using a basic Microsoft non-commercial variant of Excel.

[Trainfish]

Not a mimic panel as such but part of it may eventually become one, the below is all an Excel file. Diagonals etc just Insert>Shapes>Line and draw it to your heart's content. To change colour, thickness etc right click and select Format Shape.

[ntpntpntp]

For drawing track plans, circuit diagrams etc. I've always used Visio which is now part of the Microsoft family I think.   It's a vector graphic drawing tool, more often used for flowcharting and similar business functions.

This track plan was drawn with Visio way back in the mid 90s (and so have all my subsequent track plans)



... as was this component layout




There isn't a free version of Visio, but there is a very similar free drawing program "Draw IO" which we now sometimes use at work in place of Visio

[chrism]

In Excel, it's Insert, then Shapes, then Rectangle. Once the shape is inserted, a right click will bring up the option to select the colour.

Just tried that and it's easy to create uprights and lengths but how do you create diagonals please?

Will it let you rotate an object?
If so, create a horizontal line then rotate it.

Can't see a way to do that, Chris, but I am only using a basic Microsoft non-commercial variant of Excel.

Have a look to see if it will let you do this;

After drawing a line (which I note can also be constrained to being horizontal by holding the shift key down), move the cursor to over the line and the cursor should change to a four-pointed arrow to allow you to drag the line around. Left-click and the line should get circles at the ends. Click and drag one of those and the line should rotate.

To get a precise angle, right-click on the line and select Format Shape. In the Size part of the Properties box there should be an entry for Rotation, just type in the angle required - a positive value rotates it clockwise, a negative one anticlockwise. Note that it appears that any change made is relative to the angle before changing the rotation, not necessarily the angle relative to horizontal or vertical.

[Coyote]

In Excel, it's Insert, then Shapes, then Rectangle. Once the shape is inserted, a right click will bring up the option to select the colour.

Just tried that and it's easy to create uprights and lengths but how do you create diagonals please?

Once you have the rectangle created, click on it and a handle will appear near the middle, drag this to whatever angle you need.

[Trainfish]

I always start with a spredsheet of square cells, usually 8x8 pixels. This way you can select a line or shape of any description, drag the end to near where you want it whilst holding the ALT key. It will align itself to the corner of the nearest cell. Do the same with the other end of the line (or another point of the shape) and hey presto, it's either perfectly horizontal,  perfectly vertical, at 45^o etc etc.

[Newportnobby]

In Excel, it's Insert, then Shapes, then Rectangle. Once the shape is inserted, a right click will bring up the option to select the colour.

Just tried that and it's easy to create uprights and lengths but how do you create diagonals please?

Once you have the rectangle created, click on it and a handle will appear near the middle, drag this to whatever angle you need.

Got it. Thanks

[Derekm]

Managed to ask my son who lives in Shanghai to do
Thanks everyone