Schematic symbols for Adobe Illustrator

Since I’ve finished my flash trigger circuit, I’ve been trying to get the schematic in the computer so I can share it with others. Minor problem — the circuit capture software I’ve tried has been horrible. Rather than fighting with counterintuitive interfaces or editing text files to fill in support for integrated circuits I need, I decided to go with the tool I know best — Adobe Illustrator.

To that end, I’ve created a symbol library that contains the circuit elements I need — capacitors, resistors, transistors, and the like. Creating a schematic diagram in Adobe Illustrator is now as simple as dragging symbols and connecting them — no fancy illustration skills needed.

The Circuit Symbols library is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 license.

Click here to download Circuit Symbols for Adobe Illustrator.

Update: I’ve updated the symbols to fit better when using “Snap to Grid”. They’re optimized for a 0.5″ grid with 16 subdivisions.

This entry was written by Matt Swann, posted on August 10, 2006 at 10:14 pm, filed under Electronics and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

18 Comments

  1. atul
    Posted December 21, 2006 at 4:41 am | Permalink | Reply

    thanks

  2. D
    Posted January 18, 2007 at 8:40 pm | Permalink | Reply

    Wow thanks a lot!!

  3. Xose
    Posted January 26, 2007 at 8:35 am | Permalink | Reply

    Oh this is awesome! Thanks!

  4. PeterM
    Posted February 11, 2007 at 7:01 pm | Permalink | Reply

    Thanks Matt, very useful!

  5. Matt Swann
    Posted February 11, 2007 at 7:09 pm | Permalink | Reply

    You’re welcome!

  6. Neil
    Posted March 15, 2007 at 11:40 am | Permalink | Reply

    Nice. Works a treat.

    BTW on windows I’m getting two font not found errors when I load the library — doesn’t affect the symbols though.

  7. Matt Swann
    Posted March 15, 2007 at 11:58 am | Permalink | Reply

    Yeah, the + and Vcc labels were probably done in an unusual font, knowing me :)

    Glad it works!

  8. akif khan
    Posted May 22, 2007 at 12:12 am | Permalink | Reply

    thank you very much

  9. wuwoze
    Posted July 29, 2007 at 1:25 am | Permalink | Reply

    Hi. Thank you very much.

    I tried SmartDraw and Visio, and they are just terrible.

  10. Matt Swann
    Posted July 29, 2007 at 8:25 am | Permalink | Reply

    You’re welcome! Hope it works well for you.

  11. flashicon@yahoo.com
    Posted November 6, 2007 at 7:58 pm | Permalink | Reply

    I have Illustrator 10 and your cs files are not showing up, can I impose and get a version saved for Illustrator 10?

    thanks for a great add-on

    Cheers,

    David

  12. Paul Sandammeer
    Posted February 11, 2009 at 1:07 am | Permalink | Reply

    Thanks a lot, these will be very useful

  13. adawes
    Posted May 11, 2009 at 9:03 am | Permalink | Reply

    Excellent, this is what I’ve been looking for. Thanks!

    • Matt Swann
      Posted May 11, 2009 at 9:13 am | Permalink | Reply

      You’re very welcome! Do let me know if you run into bugs or
      limitations — I’ll do what I can to make sure you’re unblocked.

      Cheers –

      Matt

  14. totoxa
    Posted June 20, 2009 at 1:51 pm | Permalink | Reply

    Thanks

  15. bh
    Posted August 19, 2009 at 1:10 pm | Permalink | Reply

    very helpful, thanks. No inductors, though?

    • Matt Swann
      Posted August 19, 2009 at 6:57 pm | Permalink | Reply

      No, unfortunately no inductors — I made this symbol set for a project I was working on, and it didn’t occur to me to also add those. Sorry!

  16. Nick
    Posted December 22, 2009 at 4:03 am | Permalink | Reply

    Hey, how did you get the symbols to conform to the grid like that? I’m using cs3 and I wish to add extra symbols to your library. However mine never align to grid once I add them as a symbol.

    Is there somewhere you learnt to do this?

    Regards,

    Nick

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