Software for Writing Patent Applications

PowerPoint is a better program for putting on the numbers and lead lines. And I'm not talking about using it for any higher level drawing capability here. For lead lines, numbers, and FIGS. labels it is fine. Also, you might be better off exporting as tifs. jpeg can sometimes "dirty" the image. Also, if your drawings export as single pixel lines, you will need to run them through an image processing app to fatten the line weight in order to meet PTO requirements. Most photo editors will do this.

The last post is right that PowerPoint is good for adding lines, arrows, circles, etc to pictures. You can then select the picture and everything you've added, group it, and save it all as a single picture. That way Word will treat it as a simple picture, not a group of objects which can lead to annoying Word formatting things.

Pro/E exports of jpegs are typically fine for reports/presentations. I would not recommend tiffs for that since they will make your report much larger.

Word is fine for the writing and editing and labeling of figures. You can type it out, or if have a large number of figures and sections, it can be useful to use the built in auto text for that purpose, but it can take a few minutes to figure it out and make it do what you want.

I fully agree with all of the above by Guest if the intent is to compile text and images into one Word file for someone else to compile into a patent application.

However - if your intent is to use the drawings that you create as the actual patent drawings to be submitted to the PTO as part of the application, there is no need to transfer it to Word, and there may be problems when converting to pdf for electronic filing. And I would stick with tif images as well if they are to be used as patent drawings, for the reasons cited above.

I use PPT routinely for patent drawings. Even highly complex ones, as long as I can get the detailed images that I need exported from the 3D file.