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I am looking to document a hardware project my company is putting together. It consists of a Raspberry Pi prototype board and some basic circuitry.
The tutorials on raspberrypi.org have very nice wiring diagrams; for example, the image below. I would like to generate similar-looking diagrams for my documentation. Does anybody know what software they use to generate these images and if I can use it for my own projects?
Assuming here you want to create similar images to what Raspberrypi.org provides (your question asks how the images are made, but you do not provide a reason why you want to know this): You can create similar diagrams using the Fritzing open source circuit design software, downloadable at http://fritzing.org/home/.
Output looks like this:
You can then turn these circuits into PCB designs, and even order your PCB printed right from Fritzing itself. Outputs generated are compatible with what most PCB service need as inputs.
I believe they have their own in-house designer who created the images you're referring to, as discussed here:
Our new in-house designer Sam has produced the templates along with a brilliant set of icons, components, characters, illustrations and bespoke GPIO and wiring diagrams.
That being the case, the likely candidates are Illustrator and Photoshop. There is a repository of reusable image resources on the Raspberry Pi Learning GitHub page.
Based on the education resources of the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the SVGs of Fritzing, you can create your own diagrams with GIMP:
Example images:
I used paths in GIMP to draw the jumper wires. Watch this tutorial to see how that's done.
The education resources of the Raspberry Pi Foundation are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 meaning you are free to create new diagrams based on theirs. You have to attribute the Raspberry Pi Foundation by, for example, linking back to their web site.
If you publish your work, you have to license your work under the same license.
The Fritzing images are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0, an earlier version of the same license.
¹ I'm not a lawyer.
