has someone created a set of 3d tikz sketches for common computer hardware?
(I have been trying to design an internal 3-D CD-ROM drive, starting from http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/annotated-3d-box/, but the more I tinker with it, the less it looks to me like a CD-ROM drive. On the bright side, my doodles with ipad drawing programs don't look any better, either.)
The best approach for you, I think, is embedding external images within a tikzpicture.
But if you really want to have sketches drawn with tikz, 3d approach is less sutable than 2d. Below you can find my humble attempt to draw a CD drive. I use TikzEdt to make it.
\documentclass[border=10pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\tikzset{border/.style={rounded corners=7pt,line width=5pt,draw=black!70,fill=black!20}}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw[border] (-5.5,2.5)--(0,0)--(4,2)--(-1.5,4.5)--cycle;
\draw[border] (-5.5,2.5)--(-5.5,1)--(0,-1.5)--(0,0)--cycle;
\draw[border] (0,-1.5)--(4,0.5)--(4,2)--(0,0)--cycle;
\draw[draw=none,top color=black!80, bottom color=black!70] (0.4,-0.95)--(3.6,0.65)--(3.6,1.4)--(0.4,-0.2)--cycle;
\begin{scope}
\clip (0.4,-0.575)--(3.6,1.025)--(5,1.025)--(5,-2)--(0.4,-2)--cycle;
\draw[line width=5pt,draw=black!50,fill=black!10] (2.2,0.1) ellipse (2 and 1);
\draw[line width=5pt,draw=none,fill=black!20] (2.2,0.1) ellipse (1.3 and 0.65);
\draw[line width=2pt,draw=black!10,top color=black!50, bottom color=black!70] (2.2,0.1) ellipse (0.5 and 0.25);
\end{scope}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}
Result:
3dandperspective. I doubt that a collection of hardware pictures will become parts of an official TikZ library anytime soon. If you are interested in an automatized ordering of the faces of the shapes, you may want to look here. – Oct 18 '19 at 05:20