Jim
"Timing Diagrams" suggests to me very simple line graphics that many
programs could produce. You do not say for what environment/OS, but
these few would cover DOS/Windows/Unices:
Visio, the built-in graphics in MS-Word, Dia, the Gimp, OpenOffice's
Draw, Karbon14, Skencil, QCad, Xfig, and any low end 2D CAD program.
(You can probably find old DOS CAD software for less than $10, old
versions of Autosketch, TurboCad, etc.)
If you do not need any "timing analysis" (whatever that means,) what
are the requirement for timing diagram editor?
Roberto Waltman.
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Timing Designer from Chronology is the standard.
http://www.chronology.com/index.asp
As you have probably noticed, it's not cheap. But it does meet your
requirement of being decent. You say you don't need timing analysis. If that
is true then you can just use your favourite vector graphics editor. You
don't need a timing diagram editor per se. I would use Visio. Others have
made equally good suggestions.
However, you are probably going to want some kind of automation, whereby you
can change some numbers and the picture changes automatically. In that case
Timing Designer is probably your best bet.
Actually, you can do some very decent timing diagrams with
Excel. Are you simply talking about square waves, a la logic
analyzer traces?
I use data something like this, for example:
1 1 3 6
1 1 4 6
2 1 4 6
2 1 3 6
3 1 3 6
3 2 4 6
4 2 4 6
4 2 3 5
5 2 3 5
5 2 4 5
6 2 4 5
6 2 3 5
7 2 3 5
7 2 4 5
8 2 4 5
8 1 3 5
9 1 3 5
9 1 4 5
10 1 4 5
10 1 3 6
11 1 3 6
11 1 4 6
Then I specify Line Chart, X/Y, no Gridlines.
I have duplicate X values in the first column to provide nice
edge transitions. The first x of a pair gets the value before
the transition, the second the value after.
(Note: in cases where no values change, you don't need duplicate
lines, but this was easier to type in on short notice...)
Paste this into excel (or any spreadsheet with graphics, I imagine),
select the area and graph it, and you'll see what it looks like (I
don't want to html this response to show you). Then you can customize
your graph how you like it.
You can even put formulas in and watch it change dynamically.
I even had a way to even scroll the timing waveform at one point, but
that's not at my fingertips at the moment.
Rufus
Jim
Jim
I often use ASCII, fixed font:
________________________________
___| |_______
____
__________________________| |____________
________________ __ ___ ____
---<________________X__X___XXXXX____>-------
0 1 2 2 3 4
0 signal starts tri-state
1 turnon
2 transition
3 illegal / undefined
4 goes tri-state
Note the upper trace (enable) changes just before the result (tri-state on
and off), etc.
--
Regards,
Arie de Muynck
Most vector drawing packages can do this. Of course spending
time on editing lines is hardly productive. There are quite a few
packages that has scripting support built in. Using this should allow
you to fairly easily provide dynamic lines, which you can specify
using a simple script. Using this approach gnuplot is a possibility.
Regards
Anton Erasmus
If one defines a nice TrueType font, then this approach can generate
very nice looking diagrams.
Regards
Anton Erasmus
Here is a link to such a TrueType font.
http://www.josephpalmer.com/etc-local/misc/xwave.zip
Regards
Anton Erasmus
I wonder if (just thinking aloud) a Project Management / Critical Path
Method, etc. program could be coerced into producing this kind of
drawings? (Or produce some kind of output that could be converted into
drawings?)
They deal with the same type of constraints: "This action lasts at
least such and such time", "This event must happen before that", "That
event happens at time X" and so on.
> Here is a link to such a TrueType font.
> http://www.josephpalmer.com/etc-local/misc/xwave.zip
Thanks! This looks really fine.
Regards,
Arie de Muynck
Jim
Uzytkownik "James Beck" <j...@reallykillersystems.com> napisal w wiadomosci
news:MPG.1c7d9524a...@news.west.earthlink.net...
Timing Tool is pretty cool. I use it from time to time. It's a java applet
so you use it online. It's really well done and free for the 'lite' version.
Noel
If you go to that great a length, you are better of programming
in a real language like PostScript directly.
Note that about everybody has a PostScript interpreter available
in the guise of a printer driver or whatever.
Examples of usage of this can be found on my site
http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst
e.g. forthassembler.html (I'm doing opcode sheets with PostScript).
It helps if you have exposure to stack based languages, (Forth).
Postludes and preludes are a bit of magic, but you need not
understand them anyway. (I don't.)
The nice thing about a programmed approach is that you can
easily tweak (e.g. change length of scale, filling in
ms/scale etc.)
>
>Rufus
Groetjes Albert
--
--
Albert van der Horst,Oranjestr 8,3511 RA UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
One man-hour to invent,
One man-week to implement,
One lawyer-year to patent.
On the other hand, for purposes of training, Excel has all the
annotation tools as well for presentation of the graphs.
So you can drag and drop call out balloons and line art to
embellish the graph to your liking, which would be a lot more work
if done programmatically.
It all boils down to how much you have to do and how often and tools
you are used to.
Rufus
You need, like man, what you really need is TimeGen from Xfusion
software.
I had exactly the same requirement as you, and this is the tool you
want.
Steve
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Jim
>In article <2kak41t2l16nqt5ct...@4ax.com>, Steve Krenek
><steve.k@<no>mad.<spam>scientist.com> says...
>> On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 22:37:14 GMT, James Beck
>> <j...@reallykillersystems.com> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >Does anyone make a DECENT timing diagram editor?
>> >I don't need any timing analysis, just some pretty graphics to help get
>> >some information across to some techs that do not speak English very
>> >well, and I'm sure the data will be needed for a manual as well. The
>> >timings are in milliseconds, not ns and my googling has led to some
>> >pretty expensive dead ends.
>> >
>> > Jim
>>
>> You need, like man, what you really need is TimeGen from Xfusion
>> software.
>> I had exactly the same requirement as you, and this is the tool you
>> want.
>>
>> www.xfusionsoftware.com
>>
>> Steve
>>
>I actually downloaded the trial version of this one HOPING it would do
>what I wanted, but for some reason (now forgotten). I didn't like it/had
>a problem with it/it didn't do everything I needed. You know......
>
There was a discussion about this a month or so ago. One cheap and
easy way is to use a font that contains all the necessary elements
used in timing diagrams, and then simply use a text editor to generate
the diagrams.
Regards
Anton Erasmus