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I need to sketch some diagrams involving basic symbols like springs and dampers, specifying angles, perpendicularity etc... something like the images below:

enter image description here

enter image description here

Obviously my first option was word, then power point, the visio, in which the latter was a bit more productive, but I haven't found any other software that will let me do the diagrams more productively and have an elegant professional look.

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  • $\begingroup$ Autocad is one option $\endgroup$ – Solar Mike Aug 22 '17 at 16:01
  • $\begingroup$ Questions like this are effectively polls, and polls do not work well in the StackExchange Q&A model as they do not hold up well over time. $\endgroup$ – user16 Aug 23 '17 at 11:51
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This is more of a long comment than an answer as i can not advice any specific software. First, if you intend to do anything professional in print or web productions than yous shouldn't be looking in direction of Microsoft for anything. Much abused does not mean any good.

First tier would be to use direct vector drawing apps. In this category you have:

  1. Illustrator
  2. Autocad
  3. Inkscape
  4. Corel draw etc.

They are more than capable of doing these.

enter image description here

Image 1: 12 minutes of playing with Illustrator, and that's about all I have time for.

You can also use pacakges designed to do programmatic input like Tex and TiKz for example. Also Mathematica works quite well for both images, and you can animate in it.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks! actually , these are great recommendation. For a new user like me, which one of the reccomended would have the less steep learning curve? $\endgroup$ – spe4ker Aug 22 '17 at 17:14
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    $\begingroup$ Download the demo versions and answer your own question! Check the prices as well - that might rule out some of the options for you. Personally I would go for something that claims to be a technical drawing of CAD application, not a general purpose graphics program (e.g. inkscape) or a program whose main function is something else (e.g. mathematica) which can more or less do what you want, but weren't really designed to do it. $\endgroup$ – alephzero Aug 22 '17 at 18:26
  • $\begingroup$ @alephzero the problem with technical drawing applications is that they generally arent all thet good for general purpose drawing and typography. I would choose illustrator over many cad apps every day. They dont really make dedicated direct modelling CAD tools anymore. Besides autocad is pretty expensive. $\endgroup$ – joojaa Aug 22 '17 at 18:36
  • $\begingroup$ +1: For this complete list. You also added tikz :). $\endgroup$ – MrYouMath Aug 23 '17 at 21:31

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