Looks like nice quality print. I’ll have to try that!
rgds
AndrewR
Just for the sake of documenting the experiment.
I exported a schematic of mine A4 landscape not busily populated (is a two IC job plus some annotations for simulation), to Powerpoint from Office 2019 (desktop, not “subscription” license) and Impress (LO 7.5.9).
The results are acceptable for projection and there is a slight sharpness in favour of Powerpoint.
The two paste ops were done in a all blank slide, to occupy the full area and the command was Ctrl-V so uses the defaults in both SW.
They automatically filled the whole slide.
The fun fact is that a third drill was done using SoftMaker 2028 Presentations, and it became clear that the clipboard image is much larger than the “real state” for Powerpoint of Impress, and in Presentations the figure pasted required scroll bars to see the whole picture (prior to a reduction on its size to fit the slide if the document were to be saved and used afterwards).
HTH
I would like to reinforce your observation remembering that when presentation are done in LaTeX beamer, presently the package of choice for presentations using this solution, the authors stress that the graphics for presentations are supposed to be 35 mm slides from the analogic era and the original PDFs produced have all the objects thought for this resolution.
Also, a lot of “courses”, coaches, tutorials are adamant about the minimum font size to use for a confortable [audience] reading, to restrain the slides to some magic number of bullets, etc.
So yes: Powerpoint is not designed to be used for documentation for electronic projects. Word would be an adequate for those who have to or insist in using Office.
no doubt we all have preferences…
Libre’s Impress loads the Clipboard’s image (a PNG) at perfect size for the Default Impress document/slide. Kicad’s page for my schematic is 8.5x11 Landscape (a hair larger than A4).
Also, user can set Preferred Image Resolution…
Default - As loaded without setting anything loads the Full page content
I changed the Page Size and Exported PDF-Directly…
Untitled 1.pdf (1.3 MB)
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For the record, when “File” → “Export” → “Drawing to Clipboard” is chosen, it seems to be transferred at 72dpi according to Photoshop. This is presumably for screen viewing.
Maybe the option to set the exported resolution to whatever was preferred would be a good feature request? Or even an “Export to ‘???’ Format” option would be good though that is there as the Print to “Microsoft Print To PDF”?
I already posted that the resolution depends on paper size.
Do you get the same or similar numbers?
And indeed, some way of setting the resolution or pixel size for expored pictures is a reasonable request. I am happy with SVG export myself though.
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No, the size of the export is dependent on paper size but the resolution is the same at 72pixels per inch no matter what the paper size.
I’ve tested this twice. I set my paper to A4 and tested and then to A3 with the same schematic. The paper size clearly increases in Kicad and the import into Photoshop shows this too as it includes the diagram margins. Photoshop reports a bigger Image Size but still in the same resolution.
Look at my table.
For A2 and A1 the resolutions drops considerably.
For those doing documentation with PowerPoint, a great workflow is to use KiCad’s File->Plot, select SVG, and then there are a couple of paths;
The first path is to directly drag-and-drop that SVG file into a PP slide. You’ll see the entire schematic sheet, and it will be zoomable as much as desired (because it’s vector format, and PP understands that). I’m assuming Office 365 is being used, and not an old version of PP.
The second, perhaps better path, is to use Inkscape as an in-between step. If you insert the SVG file into a blank Inkscape sheet, then you can ungroup (by clicking on the schematic on the Inkscape sheet, and then selecting Object->Ungroup from the Inkscape menu, and then you can click and drag-select portions of the schematic if desired. and copy-paste from there into PowerPoint. You still retain the vector quality, and you can easily split the documentation schematic documentation into a modular layout with this technique. The reason for Inkscape, is that although PP can perform an Ungroup by itself, it’s pretty poor (PP issue), whereas Inkscape can ungroup a SVG without strange artifacts.
If you’re documenting for web on the other hand, then a shortcut method is to simply zoom the schematic portion of interest in the KiCad schematic editor, and then just use normal copy-paste (e.g. Microsoft Snipping Tool). If you’ve got a high-res monitor, then the captured resolution can be more than required for web documentation, and you can save in (say) PNG format. I frequently use this approach for documenting schematics in blogs (obviously, if it’s open source, it’s good to supply the PDF schematic, and the KiCad source files, in (say) a GitHub project in that case).
The screenshot below shows PP with the two methods. Both images are zoomable within PP, because they are both vector format.
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Yes, I’ve seen your table Paul. Nevertheless…
I copy the same schematic to clipboard from both A4 and A3 in Kicad. I open a new document in Photoshop, automatically set to the correct size for the clipboard content. I paste from the clipboard into it. I look at Image → Image Size. I am seeing the same 72 pixels per inch resolution reported with the correct pixel count for each.
If I then zoom in to 200%, that’s one beyond the optimum display smoothness, both imports show the same degree of unacceptable pixelation. I have attached a picture of the same small section of the schematic to show just this comparison. You can clearly see that there is no difference in the resolution and both are being viewed at 200% shown in their top bars
At least Photoshop seems to be getting it right.
Oh, one other thing I noticed. When you choose Export to Clipboard it does not necessarily copy the entire sheet. It crops the schematic to only the area of the paper that is required. My A3 version above has the schematic moved up to the top left corner and the export is limited to only 2/3 of the paper in each direction. This is clearly shown by the surround indexing. I have up to just under C6.
I’m not a computer graphic designer. Never heard about it. Do KiCad 3D viewer has a function File - Save As…?
I have no KiCad at hand to check it.
Its not about documenting projects with PP, although having done quite a few, I’d argue that PP when formatted for portrait mode, is superb for that purpose. Word is great for generating documents that get printed out, but it is a PITA wrt putting a diagram on a page and it staying where you put it. You have to lock it in position but even then, it can be temperamental. But, it is still the best available when you consider referencing, indexing etc. Note, I am talking about printed documents here and not packages that are aimed for producing pages on a website which have a different set of requirements and fewer constraints than Word has.
I worked in electronics and semiconductors for 40 yrs. In the old days, we would plot a circuit diagram out on A3 or A2 with a big HP or similar plotter for checking/markup etc. Same for PCB layout. Engineers stopped doing that 20 years ago and instead simply pasted their circuits into PP and then printed out on A4 or A3 as required. I honestly don’t know of anyone still plotting stuff out on a plotter in electronics anymore - all of the apps engineers I worked with used PP for their daily circuit review/dev work, checking etc by pasting an appropriate circuit diagram image into a slide. There is no doubt that MS have made life more difficult by throwing out some of the excellent import features they used to support - that is a real pity IMV.
I thought you could select between page view and circuit view - is that not perhaps your issue?
I need to try this - the plot function is definitely better than a screen grab.
“I thought you could select between page view and circuit view” - Never heard of that Bonsai. Do you know where it would be found? I have looked in Kicad and searched online but can’t find anything like that.
I don’t have an issue with any of this now, my needs have been fulfilled by finding M$'s really good PDF exporter in the Print to File area. How odd of Kicad to use a sideways scroll only three options deep to hide it from me! I now know that that can take the schematic up to 6400x magnification without any loss of resolution at all. The joy of vector graphics!
I’m currently losing my grip on what we are now trying to solve here to be honest. No one really seems to be taking in anyone else’s suggestions. 
Click on the left icon to display the whole drawing incl. the sheet boarders and title block and click on the right icon to show just the schematic.
Hahaha! Like a lot of other things in Kicad I just completely missed that one. It’s obvious when someone who knows shows you. Absolutely great, thanks Bonsai. And I love the third icon too for the Zoom to Selection drag too.
EDIT: Nope, just tried the export to clipboard from all 3 of those options and every one gives the whole sheet, borders and all.
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