I am trying to draw some diagrams for one of my professors text books and was wondering what good basic graphic software is available to draw simple shapes, squares, pentagons, hexagons, etc. And also be able to add text to the shapes i have created.

I have tried paint, but it is very tedious and hard to edit, Word works better but does not allow for me to put the shapes precisely where i want them. I also need to draw some complex shapes like double helixes and cell damage flow charts

I believe auto-cad to be much to powerful for what I am trying to do, and I am not very fluent in using it.

any suggestions?

7/23/2008 2:49:19 PM

umm have you tried Excel?

7/23/2008 2:52:51 PM

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/designandcreate/tp/artsoftware.htm

check that out.

7/23/2008 2:58:46 PM

Paint.NET
http://www.getpaint.net/

7/23/2008 2:59:01 PM

Inkscape

7/23/2008 5:07:38 PM

visio?

7/23/2008 5:08:58 PM

http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/

[Edited on July 23, 2008 at 6:04 PM. Reason : for simple shapes, it can't get easier/free'er]

7/23/2008 6:03:28 PM

Visio is available on VCL: http://vcl.ncsu.edu

7/23/2008 6:25:27 PM

Visio or Powerpoint. Powerpoint sounds like exactly what you need, it's a pretty darn good charting application these days. Otherwise Visio will definitely work. I know you can get a free trial of Visio from Microsoft's site

7/24/2008 12:41:31 AM

I'll second Visio. I wish there was a student priced version of Office 2007 that came with Visio in it. Granted, it's only 69.95 or so for students to get "standard" but I want the dynamic linking and the shapes libraries in pro (piping layouts, electrical diagrams, etc.)

7/24/2008 2:07:16 AM