Engineering students: IEEE and ACM templates without the weekend of pain

IEEE and ACM templates are not optional decoration. They are the submission format. Starting from a random zip someone re-uploaded three years ago is how you spend the night before the deadline renaming fonts.

Start from the official class

Download the class and example from the society or the conference site. Put the .cls and example .tex in your project root. Compile once before you write a single original sentence so you know the environment works.

Oleafly’s template gallery and the free app install packs that track common venues; still verify against the call for papers for that year.

Two-column float rules

In two-column mode, wide figures use figure* and often only appear at the top of a page. Place the float near the first reference and keep widths at \columnwidth or \textwidth intentionally. Side-by-side subfigures need careful widths or they overflow into the margin.

Equations in narrow columns

Long derivations break in \columnwidth. Use multline or split, or move the derivation to an appendix. Do not shrink the equation font until the line is unreadable; reviewers notice.

References

IEEE numeric styles and ACM styles disagree on details. Use the bibliography style the template ships with. Do not invent a hybrid. Validate the .bib with the BibTeX validator for missing fields before camera-ready.

Version control is part of the lab report now

Senior design and conference papers both benefit from Git commits after each successful compile. Local-first editors keep the repo next to the PDF preview so you are not copying zip files named submission_really_final.zip.