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Introduction

Here I will be covering the setup of circuit macros for mac but most steps should work on other platforms too. I will show how to create a circuit diagram using PSTricks and Tikz PGF.

Install

M4

First of all download M4 from Here or if that link is down check here for updates. Uncompress the file and store it where you would like. After that point the M4PATH variable to the location of the folder as seen below.

    export M4PATH=$M4PATH:~/Desktop/Projects/CircuitMacros

Dpic

Download DPIC from gitlab here and unzip the folder. On mac the installation is required to be local due to SIP (System Integrity Protection) so use the command below. Otherwise if not on mac (sudo) make install should work.

    sudo make PREFIX=local install

Create a circuit

First create the m4 file explaining the circuit, if you would like a test file, create a file called quick.m4 with the contents:

    .PS # Pic input begins with .PS
    cct_init # Read in macro definitions and set defaults
    elen = 0.75 # Variables are allowed; default units are inches
    Origin: Here # Position names are capitalized
    source(up_ elen,V); llabel(,v_s,)
    resistor(right_ elen,,E); rlabel(,R,)
    dot
    { # Save the current position and direction
    capacitor(down_ to (Here,Origin)) #(Here,Origin) = (Here.x,Origin.y)
    rlabel(,,); llabel(,C,)
    dot
    } # Restore position and direction
    line right_ elen*2/3
    inductor(down_ Here.y-Origin.y); rlabel(,L,); b_current(i)
    line to Origin
    .PE

PStricks

Compile a file

Compile using the commands:

    m4 pstricks.m4 quick.m4 > quick.pic
    dpic -p quick.pic > quick.tex

Insert into LaTeX

To insert the .tex file into an actual document you will require the basic LaTex info and the pstricks package.

    \documentclass[11pt]{article}
    \usepackage{pstricks}
    \begin{document}	
    \begin{figure}[hbt]
    \centering
    \input quick
    \caption{Customized caption for the figure.}
    \label{Symbolic_label}
    \end{figure}
    \end{document}

and compile using XeLaTeX.

Tikz PGF

Compile a file

Compile using the commands:

    m4 pgf.m4 quick.m4 > quick.pic
    dpic -g quick.pic > quick.tex

Insert into LaTeX

To insert the .tex file into an actual document you will require the basic LaTex info and the tikz package.

    \documentclass[11pt]{article}
    \usepackage{tikz}
    \begin{document}	
    \begin{figure}[hbt]
    \centering
    \input quick
    \caption{Customized caption for the figure.}
    \label{Symbolic_label}
    \end{figure}
    \end{document}    

and compiling using LaTeX.

Result

Figure 1: Resulting schematic, identical in both methods.

If you would instead like an SVG image you can re-render using the SVG.m4 package and dpic -v but I would personally use the pdf2svg package here and is as simple as:

    pdf2svg input.pdf output.svg

resulting in a shape for shape identical svgremake of the PDF. and gives the following result:

Figure 2: Resulting SVG schematic.

I did change the color to white to be visable on the website but it would naturally be black.