# Helvetica font and ohm symbol

I am writing an industrial laboratory report, where I need to use Helvetica. My preamble contains:

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{phv}\selectfont
\usepackage[margin=10pt, font=bf, ]{caption}


I need the ohm symbol in the text of the document and in numerous captions, that are in bold characters. I have tried a lot of options, such as \usepackage{textcomp}, \usepackage[squaren, Gray, cdot]{SIunits}, \usepackage{gensymb}, and many ways to write the ohm or Omega symbol. However none looked really nice. I am currently using $\Omega$ in the main text, and $\boldsymbol\Omega$ in the captions. Is there any way to get an Omega matching visually Helvetica text?

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Welcome to TeX.sx! A tip: If you indent lines by 4 spaces, they'll be marked as a code sample (you can also highlight the code and click the "code" button - the one with "{}" on it). You can also use backticks  to mark your inline code as I did in my edit. :) –  Paulo Cereda Dec 21 '11 at 19:53
@Yves Is using XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX a possibility? Finding a good symbol is tricky, and it's a lot easier if you can load UTF-8 font symbol. –  Joseph Wright Dec 21 '11 at 20:20
I assume you've already verified that Helvetica supplies a glyph capital-Omega, right? If there's no such glyph, it might be very difficult to find one that matches Helvetica's rather distinctive look... –  Mico Dec 21 '11 at 20:24

Finding the correct symbol is tricky. Rather than loading phv directly, or using the helvet package, I'd be tempted to use the newer tgheros package. This uses TeX Gyre Heros (another Helvetica clone, but with better glyph coverage). Loading this along with textcomp will set up \textohm properly. You could then use that directly, but I'd (unsurprisingly) favour using my own siunitx package to deal properly with units and so forth:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{siunitx}
\usepackage{tgheros,textcomp}
\usepackage[margin=10pt,font=bf]{caption}
\sisetup{detect-weight}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
\begin{document}

Some text \textohm{}  \si{\ohm}.
\begin{figure}
\caption{Some text  \textohm{} \si{\ohm}.}
\end{figure}

\end{document}
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Thanks a lot. I will try this option. I should have indicated that I am a beginner in Latex, as I am trying to evaluate the feasibility of using it for industrial documents, as a pilot experiment. Arial font was the font previously used for the laroratory reports, and I picked up Helvetica as a reasonnably close option, in order to maintain visual consistency with prior art.... –  Yves Dec 22 '11 at 17:21
I have tried and it looks magnificent. I am anxious to convert all other SI units. I do have in this pilot report Nm, MPa, GHz, degrees Celcius, Volts, etc. These were obviously less critical visually, but of course using the real unit is far more satisfactory –  Yves Dec 22 '11 at 18:10