Calling sketch from LaTeX

[James Arruda]

I am curious (and my googling hasn't found anything), if there is a
way to call sketch from within latex? Really, being able to say in
Latex 'run this on the command line' would be very useful. This way I
can have latex call sketch, build a .tex file of my drawing, and draw
it all in one step.

It would really make my figure making much faster when making small
tweaks to the figures. Thanks.

[James Arruda]

After enough searching I found my answer. For anyone curious, this is
what I did.

1. Enable \write18 priveledges (add "--enable-write18" to the command
line when building the document)
2. added the following command to my latex document:
\immediate\write18{sketch airfoil.txt Sketch1.txt > blade.tex}

I also wanted to define terms inside my latex file. I'm using windows,
so I also wrote out a file with the definitions I wanted to change
rapidly doing the following:

\immediate\write18{echo def theta \thetaVal def beta \betaVal >
opts.txt}
\immediate\write18{sketch opts.txt airfoil.txt Sketch1.txt >
simple.tex}

All files are in the same directory. This is probably bad form in some
way, but hopefully this helps someone else as well.

[Azoun]

The answer to your issue is here

http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/esk/

Bye

Michele