Tool for drawing timing diagrams

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. What can be used to draw timing diagrams? Is there any easy tool out there?

31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges asked Oct 6, 2009 at 8:14 12.4k 22 22 gold badges 72 72 silver badges 89 89 bronze badges

14 Answers 14

WaveDrom is a free and open source online digital timing diagram rendering engine that uses JavaScript, HTML5 and SVG to convert WaveJSON input text description into SVG vector graphics.

2,901 10 10 gold badges 44 44 silver badges 56 56 bronze badges answered Jun 29, 2013 at 20:59 818 2 2 gold badges 8 8 silver badges 9 9 bronze badges

A picture is worth a thousand words: wavedrom.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/editor.html A pefect tool to combine with RestructuredText/Sphinx

Commented Jul 3, 2013 at 12:42 Except when the picture doesn't exist. ;) Possible to relink this? Commented Jan 25, 2019 at 5:32 Wow I was looking for one of these for long long time. thanks bro Commented Jun 9, 2021 at 19:46

I have the same problem and tried the following tools:

After trying all these I now ended up using Visio and pen&pencil. All other programs lacked support for adding arrows/relationships between signals easily. In Visio, such things are absolutely easy. And you can export the diagrams directly to PowerPoint or even as PDF for using them in LaTeX.

31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges answered Oct 6, 2009 at 13:12 604 4 4 silver badges 12 12 bronze badges

I just checked out drawtiming, thanks for the tip! It seems a nice neat package, a bit like graphviz for timing diagrams. It'll do arrows now too by the looks of things! I once tried to get the Latex things going, but since I don't have admin permissions on my work computer, I'd difficulty installing the modules.

Commented Oct 6, 2009 at 23:22

Thank you very much for the Visio tip. I am a moron not to try visio in the first place. I also checked out Drawtiming, it is kind of neat.

Commented Oct 7, 2009 at 0:45

For Visio, make sure you use the "real" (desktop) version of Visio, not the web-based Office 365 version. The web-based version is a joke (you can't even connect lines together). Powerpoint is has more powerful drawing features than web Visio.

Commented Mar 16, 2022 at 22:22

If you like LaTeX and don't mind the extra steps to get the generated image into Word (on which I guess you depend), tikz-timing is very nice. I find it very easy to use and the diagrams look very good!

Apart from that, the companies I worked in so far used Visio for this kind of tasks.

answered Oct 6, 2009 at 11:00 3,806 24 24 silver badges 18 18 bronze badges 31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges answered Jul 14, 2011 at 9:09 Gabi Davar Gabi Davar 969 10 10 silver badges 13 13 bronze badges answered Oct 6, 2009 at 8:19 131k 53 53 gold badges 182 182 silver badges 213 213 bronze badges

Timing Designer and Timing Diagrammer are the two main commercial programs. They are similar in functions and user interface. Both have OLE and other export capability.

answered Oct 6, 2009 at 17:20 Brian Carlton Brian Carlton 7,703 5 5 gold badges 41 41 silver badges 47 47 bronze badges

The good ones are very expensive. I've never seen a free one that was worth using. Visio or OpenOffice Draw are your best bet. I know my company has created special Visio stencils for doing waveforms (sorry, I can't share them). It's still a pain that way but it's not intolerable.

Commented Oct 24, 2009 at 7:50

WaveDrom tool, mentioned above, moved to GitHub wavedrom.com.

answered Jul 27, 2014 at 18:43 818 2 2 gold badges 8 8 silver badges 9 9 bronze badges

I just released a new free GUI-based timing diagram drawing tool for Windows (and Linux/MacOS via Wine).

It draws digital waveforms (signals and buses) with gaps, arrows and labels, and is highly customizable.

I hope you find it useful.

answered Sep 3, 2016 at 19:07 Nitzan Weinberg Nitzan Weinberg 31 3 3 bronze badges

I find it necessary to add TimingAnalyzer to the mix. It is only in Beta but at least he is actively developing it. ~T

36.8k 12 12 gold badges 160 160 silver badges 109 109 bronze badges answered Nov 24, 2009 at 19:50 31 1 1 bronze badge

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 be Gnome Dia, a simple vector drawing program.

answered Nov 24, 2009 at 10:34 503 3 3 silver badges 12 12 bronze badges

Some time ago we used IGOR for all kinds of measurement data visualization. But it's not for free, if that's a requirement.

31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges answered Oct 6, 2009 at 8:22 Frank Bollack Frank Bollack 25k 5 5 gold badges 50 50 silver badges 58 58 bronze badges

I use an online spreadsheet like Google Docs or Excel for timing diagrams - by making all cells equal width and height and play with the borders of the cell. This is great quick way to explain simple concepts especially during collaborative (online) work.

answered Nov 22, 2017 at 18:58 11 2 2 bronze badges

I've used Timing Designer and Waveformer. They can read basic Verilog files. Waveformer has a decent demo version for Windows. You can't save designs, but you can screen capture them. For very basic timing diagrams, I've used the Visio templates mentioned in other answers.

31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges answered Jan 7, 2013 at 19:26 877 1 1 gold badge 12 12 silver badges 26 26 bronze badges

You can use a "Free Online Digital Diagram Generator" to draw the diagram then copy and past the screen in to your documents. If you want to try a tool that do not need your login or email, and can save your editing for future use. You can try this javascript tool on google. http://hardwarelanguages.blogspot.com/2016/08/free-online-digital-diagram-generator.html

Your digital waveform diagram is saved in the URL encrypted, no one else can see it until your share the links with email/skypee/facebook, and etc.

answered Sep 1, 2016 at 14:43

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