LaTeX_Report_Skeleton

This is a latex template made to follow the University of Waterloo Work Term Report Guidelines for Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering students. It was used in-class until 2017, so should be more or less up-to-date with requirements at that time. I will attempt to provide further improvements with this over time.

This was developed on Windows, using TexStudio, and MikTex. It has been further updated using Overleaf, with the intent of being imported by future projects.

Features and Advantages

This report skeleton comes with many features, both included by default in LaTeX, by design of this skeleton, or included via custom macros. These include:

• Automatic Table of Contents, List of Figures, List of Tables
• Automatic updates of new images (on compilation), as well as data
• Easy organization of sections
• Easy numbering and references for figures, tables, references
• Including code files or snippets
• Appending PDF documents to the report (CAD drawings, etc)
• Division of sections into folders (allows easy syncing and reduced conflicts on filesharing platforms)
• Separation of styling and content; prevents accidentally re-styling random sections of the report (hopefully), and promotes consistency in various aspects (ex: boarders automatically applies to images, and the addfigure macro makes images centered)

Future Work

• Create a Title Page template
• Standardization of methods of compiling the report, and versions of LaTeX compilers.
• Testing

Setup

This repository can be cloned in a directory in which to work on the report. It has been cloned it into filesharing directories in past group projects.

Organization

The following directories are used for the following purposes:

• Figures - This is where the addfigure macro will look for image files to import
• Data - This is where the addtable macro will look for table data files to import
• Code - This is where the addcodesnippet and addcodefile macros will look for code files to import

No changes to these folders will be tracked by git, by default.

Creating Sections (NEW)

As this skeleton is currently being updated, with use on Overleaf now being included, a specific method of including sections is not as critical as it was. It can be helpful to store a .tex file for each section inside the Sections folder, or have a folder for every section and file for every subsection. If you choose to clone this repository, doing this will also prevent any possibility of committing the body content of a report.

Creating Sections (OLD)

A good portion of this section is simply suggestions. It was written when the current version of the skeleton was used to write reports synced with Dropbox, and using a macro to add sections. This made the use of more files, and a more standard structure, advantageous.

Sections are created by creating a folder within the Sections folder, such as Sections/MechanicalDesign (please avoid using spaces in filenames). Within this folder, add a .tex file of the same name, ie: Sections/MechanicalDesign/MechanicalDesign.tex.

In the past, an underscore as been pre-pended to the file name, so that it will consistently sort to one end of a list of files in the directory, when sorted by name.

This file that you have created is intended to house an upper-level section, ie: 3.0 Mechanical Design (the numbering will be automatic). You can enter the contents of the section into this file, or further distribute this to other files in the directory. Using one file for each sub-section (ie: 3.1 Chassis) can be done. This can help prevent editing conflicts when using simple filesharing programs.

Creating Sections via Python Script (Now Removed, see older commits)

You can use the python script in the Sections folder to generate a folder and matching .tex file For an upper-level directory. Run the file, and enter the desired section name, again avoiding using spaces. a _ will be prepended to the file.

Adding sections to the report

Now, in one of the three body files, the command /include can be used to include this file. You must include a relative path from the body files, and can ignore the .tex file extension. ie: /include{./Sections/MechanicalDesign/_MechanicalDesign}.

This skeleton has been arranged so that the main content of the body files is a simple listing of these commands. This allows you to easily shuffle the order of sections by changin the order of the addsection commands.

Available Macros

A few different macros have been developed to make creating a report easier. These are described below.

Note that several of these use a label. This is not a caption, but a way to refer back to a particular part of the report when cross-referencing. For example, the label given to a figure will be used when referencing that figure (ex: see Figure 5).

addfigure

addfigure{label}{filename}{caption}{scale}

This is a macro for adding images to the report. Image files will be pulled on each compile, so and changed/fixed images will be updated. This macro looks in the Figures directory, although relative paths from that directory can be added to the file name. The figure will be centered, with a box and caption.

label will be used when referencing the figure. It should be unique. filename will be the name of the file, including any relative path. The .png extension should be added. caption will be the caption underneath the figure. Figure X: is automatically added. scale is the horizontal fraction of the page that the image will take up. The range is 0-1.

addtable

addtable{label}{filename}{caption}

This is a macro for adding a table stored in a .tex file to the report. This files will be found in the Data folder. The files in this folder do not need all of the usual latex formatting (see the reportmacros file), and can include only the table data and formatting within \begin{tabular}...\end{tabular}. This macro will center the table, and place a caption on top.

label will be used to reference the figure. It should be unique among labels. filename is the name of the file. caption is the caption. Table X: is added automatically.

addcsvtable

addcsvtable{label}{filename}{caption}

This macro is similar to addtable, but allows using a csv-formatted file.

Referencing Macros

These macros are used for referencing items in the report, such as figures and tables. They use the label mentioned above. When needed, numbers will be updated automatically (ex: if a new figure is added).

reffig{label} will produce Figure X

reftable{label} will produce Table Y

refsection{sectionLabel} will produce Section A(.B.C). This will require adding \label{sectionLabel} to the end of the line beginning that section.

refappendix{label} will produce Appendix A. A similar label as for sections will be needed.

addcodesnippet

addcodesnippet{language}{filename}{firstline}{lastline}{caption}

This macro adds a snippet of code from a file in the Code directory. Only lines between firstline and lastline are included. language is the programming language, which may be identified and used for specific auto-formatting of the code. See Styling/code.tex for some examples of language styling.

addcodefile

addcodefile{language}{filename}{caption}

This macro adds an entire code file into the report.

reportcomment

reportcomment{comment}

This macro adds a comment prepended by TODO: in a red box. This will make it obvious to see any comments, and the TODO will be searchable in text to easily see if any remain.

Bibliography Types

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BibTeX