Hi all,

What kind of software do you find best for designing diagrams and figures for the thesis? I'm trying to put together schematics (a bit like flow diagrams with overlapping circles) for my literature review, and am finding that if I use the shapes function in either Word or Powerpoint, when I try to block fill the shapes with colour the edges look pixellated... I'm trying to avoid this and am wondering how best to go about it....

Probably a silly question, but I've left it very late to write my literature review so I'm hoping for something that isn't too time consuming to get used to. Also, if anyone has any tips for making this work in Word or powerpoint (to save time getting used to new software) I'd be very appreciative! Thanks in advance.

Tulip

Hi Tulip,

Personally, I'd recommend using GIMP or Inkscape. They're both open source. GIMP will be better for photo manipulation or 'artwork'; Inkscape does lots of useful things with vector graphics, so probably more use for diagrams in general.

(And don't worry, neither takes a lot of time to get to grips with :) )

Hope this helps.
Semp

I use Microsoft Visio