Drawing with Microsoft Word

Scientific Drawing with Microsoft Word

The easiest way to keep a drawing intact is to use Insert-Picture-New.
When the picture is complete, you can size the border by dragging on the handles on the picture rectangle.
The autoshapes are the way to get nice rectangles and ellipses, and if you hold down the shift key, they make perfect circles and squares.

Cross sectional autoshapes can be made into 3 dimensional objects by clicking on 3-D looking box on the menu bar.
Three-D settings then allows you to extend and orient the 3-D object.
There is also a shadow picture on the menu bar to give your object a shadow.
Smooth curves can be drawn with the curve autoshape by clicking at various turning points, and then doubleclicking on the end.
Quarter ellipse shapes and then half ellipse shapes can be made with the quarter ellipse autoshape.

There is a lattice of about a mm spacing which is implicit in the drawings and allow lines to meet quite conveniently.
Once a line or arrow is drawn, you can click on it where the crosshairs show, and then click on the dashed or arrowhead styles pictures to modify it.

You can also right mouse click to get a menu for that or for the line color.
The simplest ways to generate lines or elements of the same size is to right click on one and use copy and then right click again for paste to get a copy that you can drag to the new location.
Lines can be lengthened or shortened by clicking on the line and dragging the end boxes.

Text is entered with the text box, shown as a picture with an A in the upper left corner.

After you enter the text, a right click when the cross hairs show will allow you to go to Format Textbox to set the Fill Color to No Fill so that it does not cover the drawing beneath it.
You can also set the Line Color to No Line so that there is not a box around the letter.
Then when you again right click on the cross hairs in the text box, you can click on Set Autoshape Defaults to keep the same defaults on all future text boxes.
For Greek symbols, dial font to symbols font, and then use "a" for alpha, etc.
Superscripts can be entered by simultaneously typing ctrl-equal.
Subscripts can be entered with ctrl-shift-equal. These are the opposite for direct super or sub scripts in text.
Then type ctrl-shift to get back to the regular line mode.

Grouping: You select each element that you want to group in the drawing by holding down shift as you click on each new one, and then where the cross hairs show you right click and click on the group menu.

This allows you to move a group as a whole, and to cut, copy and paste it as a whole.
Later, if you want to alter one piece of the group, you right click and ungroup, then modify the element, and then regroup.

Rotating: You can click on your object, and then on the clockwise arrow on the menu bar to highlight the corners in green. Dragging any corner then rotates the object to your desired orientation.
Fill Coloring: There is a paintbucket picture for changing or applying a fill color to a closed area.
Line Coloring: There is a paintbrush picture to color a line or to change the line color.
Wordart: Clicking on the colorful A picture goes into wordart which can give you colorful headings or titles with interesting shapes.
Once the picture is done, mouse clicking outside the picture will fix it.
Clicking on the picture anew, and right clicking to selecting Microsoft-Draw-Drawing Object-Edit will allow you to re-edit the picture.
Right-clicking on the picture, you can select Show-Picture-Toolbar, which has crossed L's which you can put on any picture drag to recrop the picture without editing it.
Clicking on the picture and then right-clicking to Format Object allows you to place it with respect to text, and to have it on top of or under the text.