Guides
The things worth knowing when you make one of these diagrams, and when you hand it to someone else.
If you would rather try it first, open the tool and type a part number. Nothing to sign up for or install.
Where to start
Read top to bottom and you go from what the diagram is, to making one, to handing it over. If you already know what it is and want one now, start with how to make one. If you sent someone a diagram and they said the text had moved, embedding fonts is the answer. If all you need is to pick a file format, SVG or PNG is enough on its own. If the part number itself is still to be decided, designing a part number is the step before all of these.
What a part number diagram is
A part number split into ranges, each labeled with what it means. What it is for, and what it is not.
For a first visit. It gives a name to the diagram you have seen in catalogs and datasheets, says where it earns its place, and separates it from the things it gets confused with — a part list, a BOM, a spec table. Read it to decide whether one is worth making.
How to make one
Type the part number, select a range, write the meanings, place a note, save. Every button named.
The tool from start to finish, in the order the buttons appear, with how to read the checks that come up along the way and the questions people ask first — where it is saved, another machine, commercial use. Keep it open beside your first diagram.
SVG or PNG
Which to put on a product page. Decided by scaling, searchable text, print, and what the CMS accepts.
Where the diagram is going decides the format. What happens to each on the web, in print, in a PDF and in a CMS; the default when in doubt (SVG); and how to tell the cases where only PNG will do.
Embedding fonts in an SVG
Without the font, the letters are redrawn with whatever the reader has — and the spacing goes with them.
Nearly every “the text moved” report comes down to this. The three ways to embed (this tool's automatic one, by hand, outlining), what each costs, the licence questions, and how to check at the receiving end.
Designing a part number that reads well
For anyone about to define a scheme. Stable facts first, one fact per range, characters to avoid, room to grow, where the revision goes.
The step before the other guides. One invented sensor part number is taken from a vague first draft to a form a stranger can decode, with why widths should match, which characters to keep out, and how to test that the scheme holds. Also for tidying a scheme that grew on its own.
Putting the diagram on a page, in a catalog, in a PDF
After the format is chosen: how to place it. PNG width, print resolution, dark backgrounds, what to send with it, what to check at the other end.
Destination by destination — a web page, a CMS that refuses SVG, print and PDF, a dark background — with the steps and the traps. The three files to hand a designer or a print shop as a set, and the four things to check once it arrives.