My Research Process

Posted on Jan 15, 2023

Someone may complain that it’s too early for me to write a post about this topic, because I haven’t even publish any essay in integrated circuit area. I know maybe there are some issues in the post, but I really need to do it after being asked by my friend.

Literature Management

I still remember the first literature management software, which UESTC taught me, was EndNotes. Now, though I won’t use EndNotes anymore, it’s really a nice software except its price. I prefer to use Zotero, which provides 300M free space to sync. But for me, the free storage is much smaller than that I need. For a Microsoft365 user, I have a 1T Personal OneDrive Cloud. So I get to think whether there are some motheds to use WebDav of OneDrive, though which is blocked for Personal User. The best way, I think, is to mount OneDrive on Koofr. Plz follow the next steps, and then you can sync your papers on any devices.

  1. Register an account of Koof
    Go to the Koofr official website, and create an account.
  2. Attach your OneDrive with koofr.
  3. Go to Account->Preferences->Password->Create app password. Remember your password, which will be used in next steps.
  4. Open Zotero. Click Edit->Preferences->Sync->File Syncing, change Zotero to WebDAV, and fill the form using your Koofr account and the app password. And the Url is https://app.koofr.net/dav/OneDrive.
  5. If all above is done, then you can follow the 3-4 steps to configure your other devices.

Scientific Graphic Editor

Most of my labmates use Microsoft Visio to draw scientific graphics, like circuit schematics. I’d like to admit that Visio is a powerful software, but it does have some drawbacks. That’s why I use Inkscape instead of Visio.
First, Inkscape is a vector graphic editor, but Visio can’t edit vector graphics. As a “perfectionist”, I can’t stand that the endpoints of the line cannot be attached to the grid points. And Inkscape is a open source software, which has a lot of extensions. What’s more, I’m not a pure Windows OS user, and MacOS and Linux are my work OS, too. Yeah, cross-platform is important for me, so Inkscape wins the match.
However, when I try to substitute Inkscape for Visio, I find it’s hard to become proficient in the use of Inkscape. Ok, guys, just use it and you’ll be professional. And for electrical symbols, thanks to upb-lea and fsmMLK, I can draw my circuit easily.