Recently I am working with a hardware design group developing an ASIC. And I am drawing a lot of timing diagrams for which I am using Microsoft Excel, as it is easy to import into Word document. But, things are getting more and more difficult with Excel.
If you are happy with simpler waveforms on a regular grid, you can quickly create something with Timing Font or XWave (linked from the first link). Another option would beGnome Dia, a simple vector drawing program.
Timing Waveforms Drawing Tools
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle []).push(); Draw.io is a free online diagram editor where you can make various types of diagrams. With this editor, you can easily make timing diagrams using the Line tool only. First, you can plot the axis for the diagram and add time domain. Then, you can draw the zero and one signals which are represented horizontally. After drawing the signals, you can connect them by drawing a vertical line from one adjacent signal to another.
Making a timing diagram is not any harder than the other websites on this list; all you need is a Line tool. Using the Line tool, you can draw the representation of all the digital signals in your diagram. Then, you can add labels for signals and axes and name your diagram. After completing the drawing part, you can export the diagram as a PNG or JPG file. This tool also generates collaborative shareable URLs which you can share with others for online collaboration.
If you want to do your drawings in an Office-like toolset, try OpenOffice.org, specifically the Draw program. If you want to generate the best graphics (And don't mind if it takes a while), try Inkscape as suggested by digikata. Professional datasheets will probably be best served by the tikz-timing package an as suggested by jluciani, or the older (but less complex) timing.sty, both with (La)TeX (Try Lyx for a shorter learning curve, if you're new to TeX. Be warned that it's a steep curve no matter what, but it's worth it!)
If you are using TeX and friends there is a timingpackage for the tikz picture environment (check CTAN).Sometimes with the TeX tools you can find wrapperscripts or GUIs that can create standalone images.
MS Excel has a lot of features, including a decent drawing package. If you use and explore the software, you'll find things you never thought you would. For instance, would you say that Excel is a programming interface and UI for data acquisition hardware, or a reporting front-end for databases? Answer is that it can be used for these, and I know this from personally implementing these kinds of apps. Just like I've personally implemented Excel to make 2D drawings, of waveforms and more (cables, floorplans, etc).
Note also that you aren't limited to straight lines - curves are dirt-simple. Copy-paste (CTRL-C, CTRL-V) and the ability to rotate and group objects make more complex shapes easy. Another example from my experience: If you can draw a single hemisphere you can turn that into the double-helix of a shielded twisted pair on a cable schematic in no time flat (almost literally: I took a hand-wavy concept through to a PDF copy of a drawing, in 45 minutes, including the time spend submitting online requests for quote to cable vendors). For waveforms, the same things could make a sine wave or an amplitude-modulated signal.
The first suggestion I saw here was Inkscape. A drawing program! So I thought, why not Excel, you can draw with that as well? Appears that somebody indeed suggested that! And that 7 people found this a useful suggestion! I think I have to lay down for a minute.The reason that there exists so much different software is that every task has its own requirements, and each software tries to answer the demands for a particular task. If you're using Excel to draw timing diagrams you may think "see, this works too", but in reality it will do less than pencil and paper would. At least with the pencil you can handle the most basic function of timing designers: signal dependencies.
Every now and then there are situations where you need to draw timing diagram. I have drawn those sometimes with different tools, but none of them have been ideal (text description, hand drawings, ASCII art etc..).
After reading Timing waveforms posting at Hackaday I ended up testing Wavedrom. It looked quite promising for drawing digital circuit timing diagrams. Give the online editor demo a try. You can easily make simple drawings without looking at any manual or tutorial.
Various industries use this type of UML diagram, some of which include software, electronics, and engineering. Making a UML timing diagram may sound challenging, but with the use of proper tools, it can be done easily, such as the ones shown below.
Name Version Votes Popularity? Description Maintainer Last Updated d2 0.1.6-1 4 2.23 A modern diagram scripting language that turns text to diagrams grawlinson 2023-01-20 06:36 (UTC) drawio-desktop-bin 20.8.16-1 61 1.32 Diagram drawing application built on web technology languitar 2023-02-04 20:59 (UTC) heimer 3.6.4-1 4 0.75 Cross-platform mind map, diagram, and note-taking tool written in Qt lmartinez-mirror 2023-01-23 17:55 (UTC) dia 0.97.3-9 8 0.73 A GTK+ based diagram creation program eclairevoyant 2022-08-27 09:54 (UTC) drawio-desktop 20.8.16-1 59 0.44 Diagram drawing application built on web technology dvalter 2023-02-08 18:52 (UTC) owasp-threat-dragon v1.2-3 2 0.18 Electron Threat Modelling and diagramming tool by Mike Goodwin @ OWASP ulidtko 2020-11-16 13:13 (UTC) qelectrotech 0.9-2 32 0.14 An electric diagram editor entidi 2023-01-31 22:56 (UTC) texlive-tikz-dsp 0.1-1 4 0.10 A LaTeX package for drawing DSP diagrams using pgf/tikz orphan 2015-06-27 17:31 (UTC) tikzit 2.1.6-1 26 0.05 Allows the creation and modification of TeX diagrams written using the pgf/TikZ macro library haawda 2020-08-19 17:20 (UTC) graphpath 1.2-1 1 0.04 Generates an ASCII network diagram from the route table adsun 2019-07-18 13:19 (UTC) go-ascii-tool-git r108.07bb911-1 1 0.04 GoAT: render ASCII art as SVG diagrams tlgs 2022-08-30 19:07 (UTC) mermaid-cli 9.3.0-1 8 0.03 Generation of diagram and flowchart from text in a similar manner as markdown (CLI) xuhcc 2023-01-02 18:30 (UTC) qgraf 3.6.5-1 1 0.02 Feynman diagram generator for various types of QFT models zenAmp 2022-10-02 15:09 (UTC) texlive-tikz-uml 1.0-1 7 0.00 A LaTeX package for drawing UML diagrams using pgf/tikz orphan 2018-05-12 15:22 (UTC) dia-shapes 0.6.0-3 6 0.00 Additional Shapes for Dia (diagram creation program) pouyan 2016-10-31 11:24 (UTC) nwdiag 3.0.0-1 2 0.00 nwdiag generates network-diagram image from text. alexanderp 2022-01-15 11:39 (UTC) ruby-asciidoctor-diagram 2.2.1-1 1 0.00 Asciidoctor diagramming extension tba 2021-09-02 07:46 (UTC) python-diagrams 0.23.3-1 2 0.00 Diagram as Code for prototyping cloud system architectures flipee 2023-02-01 17:02 (UTC) astah-professional 8.4.0-1 19 0.00 Full-Featured Software Modeling Tool for creating UML, ER Diagrams, DFD, Flowchart and more to create a clear understanding of your software design among teams.Easy-to-use UML2.x modeler orphan 2022-02-08 20:54 (UTC) timingeditor 0.1-1 1 0.00 The Timing Editor is a free tool to draw timing diagrams. tanjiro.kamado 2019-07-08 06:42 (UTC) umlet 15.0.0-1 19 0.00 Free UML Tool for Fast UML Diagrams (stand-alone version) SammysHP 2022-04-30 08:53 (UTC) edrawmax-bin 12.0.1-2 6 0.00 All-in-One Diagram Software katsuoryuu 2022-08-17 01:56 (UTC) perl-math-geometry-voronoi 1.3-1 28 0.00 Math::Geometry::Voronoi - compute Voronoi diagrams from sets of points swiftgeek 2017-02-28 01:08 (UTC) drawio 20.7.4-1 1 0.00 Diagram drawing application built on web technology djmattyg007 2023-01-02 10:02 (UTC) yaoqiang-bpmn-editor 5.4.0-1 8 0.00 An open source graphical editor for business process diagrams, compliant with OMG specifications (BPMN 2.0). mardab 2019-12-17 17:49 (UTC) xcircuit-git 3.10.30.r0.gadc6bf9-1 3 0.00 A program for drawing publishable-quality electrical circuit schematic diagrams (development version) bidulock 2021-09-19 15:34 (UTC) wavedrom-editor 2.9.1-1 4 0.00 Timing diagram rendering engine 2bluesc 2022-12-09 03:20 (UTC) violetumleditor-git 3.0.0+0+495649c5-1 0 0.00 Java UML diagram editor (git version) twa022 2018-12-13 04:29 (UTC) violetumleditor 3.0.0-1 10 0.00 Java UML diagram editor twa022 2018-12-13 04:18 (UTC) usage-logging 1-1 0 0.00 Create daily log files with hour x minute rectangle diagram of device on/off status ivanp7 2022-11-18 12:52 (UTC) untree 0.9.9-1 0 0.00 Inverts tree diagrams back to directory structures lmartinez-mirror 2022-02-06 18:52 (UTC) tinyuml 0.13_02-4 22 0.00 A tool for creation of UML 2 diagrams with a focus on easy use and a small & stable feature set Afwas 2015-07-07 11:57 (UTC) timingeditor-svn r115-1 0 0.00 The Timing Editor is a free tool to draw timing diagrams. tanjiro.kamado 2019-07-11 20:29 (UTC) tikzit-git 3:2.1.6-1 5 0.00 Creation and modification of TeX diagrams written using the pgf/TikZ macro library - rewrite in QT and C++ haawda 2020-09-16 22:03 (UTC) tikz-cd 0.9f-1 2 0.00 A TeX package to create commutative diagrams with TikZ orphan 2019-04-07 18:59 (UTC) svgbob-git 0.5.0alpha.8.r389.503f303-1 0 0.00 Convert your ascii diagram scribbles into happy little SVG mbloms 2020-10-22 09:49 (UTC) svgbob 0.6.7-0 0 0.00 Convert your ascii diagram scribbles into happy little SVG lightning1141 2022-09-16 10:01 (UTC) structorizer 3.32.11-1 0 0.00 Structorizer is a little tool which you can use to create Nassi-Shneiderman Diagrams (NSD) Marco98 2022-08-27 11:04 (UTC) sankeymatic-web-git r120.ef55750-1 0 0.00 A Sankey diagram builder for everyone AlphaJack 2022-03-06 15:01 (UTC) ruby-asciidoctor-diagram-plantuml 1.2021.8-1 0 0.00 PlantUML JAR files wrapped in a Ruby gem tba 2021-07-19 14:59 (UTC) ruby-asciidoctor-diagram-ditaamini 1.0.1-1 0 0.00 Ditaa JAR files wrapped in a Ruby gem tba 2021-09-09 10:02 (UTC) r-venndiagram 1.7.3-3 0 0.00 Generate High-Resolution Venn and Euler Plots BioArchLinuxBot 2022-06-06 18:38 (UTC) r-venn 1.11-1 0 0.00 Draw Venn Diagrams BioArchLinuxBot 2022-06-09 00:01 (UTC) r-upsetr 1.4.0-4 0 0.00 A More Scalable Alternative to Venn and Euler Diagrams for Visualizing Intersecting Sets BioArchLinuxBot 2022-06-06 18:26 (UTC) r-semplot 1.1.6-1 0 0.00 Path Diagrams and Visual Analysis of Various SEM Packages' Output BioArchLinuxBot 2022-08-10 14:22 (UTC) r-ggvenndiagram 1.2.2-1 0 0.00 A 'ggplot2' Implement of Venn Diagram BioArchLinuxBot 2022-09-17 06:59 (UTC) r-ggdendro 0.1.23-6 0 0.00 Create Dendrograms and Tree Diagrams Using 'ggplot2' BioArchLinuxBot 2022-11-26 14:52 (UTC) r-eulerr 7.0.0-1 0 0.00 Area-Proportional Euler and Venn Diagrams with Ellipses BioArchLinuxBot 2022-12-10 06:04 (UTC) r-diagrammer 1.0.9-3 0 0.00 Graph/Network Visualization BioArchLinuxBot 2022-06-06 00:05 (UTC) r-diagram 1.6.5-4 0 0.00 Functions for Visualising Simple Graphs (Networks), Plotting Flow Diagrams BioArchLinuxBot 2022-06-06 00:04 (UTC) 126 packages found. 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