QCAD Bugtracker

Would it be possible to add Qcad’s theme folder to the local shared path, for example this would be /home/username/.local/share/QCAD/QCAD/themes for Linux. I know this works well for line types and would be extremely helpful for themes.

I’ve been able to make this work as proof of concept very easily, but many of the functions are inaccessible/difficult to override from post-processors.

Desired functionality:

1) Enable “Add Profile Toolpath” UI elements all the time (remove setRequiresSelection)
2) CAM Profile Toolpath Dialog: Drop-down menu of available Layers. First option “By Selection Only” 3) “By Selection Only” continues to pass EntityIds of selected objects (existing functionality)
4) Choosing an active Layer will use the Layer as source of EntityIds
5) Any changes to Entities on a Layer will result in those new/removed/changed objects being re-generated without having to manually select and update the tool paths. Either do not recover list of EntityIds from the ToolpathBlock, and instead use “live” each time it’s regenerated, or additional functionality to determine if a LayerId is associated with the Toolpath, and then lookup EntityIds.

I assume the persistence of the Layer selection would be available within the Toolpath, so that it will automatically update EntityIds every time a Toolpath is regenerated, without having to select Entities and updating the toolpath manually.

For large projects, being able to force select objects based upon layer dramatically reduces mistakes and speeds up the workflow.

Thanks

Hi.

I’m working currently a lot with files coming from rhino. Qcad can open them properly any also most operations on them work as usual - except the selection methods.

box select from upper left to lower right works as usual.
double click to select all connected entities is broken. (only one entity is selected).
box select from lower right to upper left does not select entities touching the selection box. (nothing is selected)

on mac os nothing is selectable with single click.
on linux single click sometimes fails (nothing is selected after clicking on a line).

thanks for looking into this :)

Martin

Property Editor - Geometry - Custom - Add Custom Property

If I use an identical Name accidentally again in the Custom Property dialog - it will overwrite the first value with the same name without any warnings.

Please see topic:
http://www.qcad.org/rsforum/viewtopic.php?f=31&p=14209&sid=162973e4a12f58c8116299b62673a520#p14209

An additional option would be useful to paste any given entity a set number of times with even/equal gaps in between.

If I work in QCAD only with Toolbars (and not with the “Cad Tools” there is nowhere a Button to find for “Create Block from selection”.
If I have to create a Block based on a selection I have to work with the Menu or have to activate the Cad Tools.

But, if I look at the Blocklist menu there is a function (+) to add an empty Block. It would be nice to have this button working for both situation - empty Block or depending on a selection to “Create Block from selection”.

Or alternative an additional Button ...

Anyway - in my opinion would that make the “Blocklist” complete.

Additional Export function for export/import into 3D Programs like Sketchup etc. (file types like .dae, .3ds, .ddf, .skp).

See also:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/rsforum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=2176

The Info Tool Polygonal Area is a helpful tool ... but I like to ask for additional options

Yes, the polygonal area makes absolute sense but many times you have just to check a square or rectangle area!

It would be nice and time (click) saving if we could use a “Strg Key” to limit the polygonal area to just a rectangle area.
Two mouse clicks for a rectangle area and done

In addition to that it would be nice to have the possibility to count up or down a couple areas.
E.g. I measure area 1 plus area 2 or area 1 minus area 2 ...
Maybe just with an additional keystroke like + or -

Hello dear CAM developers!

I need to use the same tool at different spindle speed in a single machining file.
I would deeply appreciate if you could add a Spindle Speed edit field in the CAM Profile Toolpath edit window in order that each Toolpath can have its own Spindle Speed value (same as you did for Feed Rate and Plunge Rate)

FYI, the tool on my concern is a laser who’s power is driven by the Spindle Speed PWM signal.
I need to be able to do both engraving and cutting in a single file.
Alas! this laser tool is defined with a fix and unique number (99).
Therefore I cannot define different laser tools with different speeds.

Many thanks
Best regards.

Add support for alternate units for dimension style, for example to display units in mm and in.

Hey, this is the first of my feature suggestion submissions that isn’t tied to a corresponding suggestion thread on the QCAD forum.

Should I always create corresponding feature suggestion threads or is it ok (or better?) to just post ideas here?

Anyway though, here’s the idea:

I noticed that it is relatively easy to use things like the QCAD Split Entities and/or Paste Along Entity tool(s) to create an even set of divisions along a curve or line.

There’s also the Misc → Draw → Counter available too, for automated counting.

These together are useful for creating a “scale ruler” to be printed on a schematic for ease of reference or for use in cases where someone forgets to bring along a physical measuring device or when someone else is using that measuring device.

For example, one could print a to-scale 1 foot long ruler (or whatever other scale is relevant, e.g. 1 inch for small objects or just as a nice scale reference/legend/key) on the schematic page for convenience.

However, it would be nice if there was a convenient tool added to the Dimensions tool category that automated this entire process and was able to create arbitrary ruler-like numbered reference scales along lines (and even better if it also worked on arcs, though less important).

Even better would be if this “auto tick” or “auto ruler” tool supported multiple levels of tick scaling (e.g. 2 or 3) such as what one sees on actual rulers.

For example, an imperial ruler for a foot (I’m in the US currently) will typically having increasingly smaller tick marks added at halfway points between each of the numbered points along the ruler’s scale, which makes using it quickly much easier. For example, it’ll have a half-length tick for half an inch and then a quarter-length tick for each quarter of an inch within an inch (with the inch’s ticks being full length).

It seems like it could be relatively easy to implement that kind of nested tick marking system, which would make it super convenient and pleasant for the user of QCAD to create usable to-scale ruler-like objects wherever they desire them with hardly any effort!

I think this idea would also fit extremely well with existing tools in the Dimensions category and would be useful for many/most QCAD users!

It’s yet another good QCAD feature that could attract more people to buy upgraded copies of QCAD in the future I think!

I hope you implement it. Small conveniences still make a big difference.

Anyway, thanks a bunch again for creating this awesome program!

That’s all the suggestions I have for today.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and upcoming week, etc!

It would be nice to have an additional Radius Measurement tool with short leads. The current Radius tool shows always the lead line to the center of the radius what is in many cases not useful.

I’m not asking for a workaround

Hello! This is perhaps the most useful and valuable of the suggestion ideas I’ve had for QCAD so far!

I think it would be extremely useful if there was an option within the QCAD preferences for making it so that the hotkeys currently bound to each tool button in the UI (if existent) are always displayed such that they are overlaid on top of each of the buttons. There are two main approaches I can think of for doing that (both intended to avoid disturbing the existing layout of the UI):

1. Display the current hotkey binding associated by drawing it (probably in a distinct color) on one of the edges or corners of each of the buttons (such as the bottom middle side, the lower left corner, or the lower right corner). Even at a small font size I think this would be very effective and useful.
2. Instead of making the overlaid hotkey display in a small font at a side or corner of each button, you could have the hotkey text be in a large font and overlaid on top of the entire button, using things such as transparency and a distinctive (never used in the other parts of the UI) color to ensure that the button icons is still readable. A broader width of the font stroke may also help if transparency is used, so that the underlying icon lines remain more readable.

Both approaches have pros and cons. I personally lean towards the former, but Husky and CVH seemed to take issue with the readability of small fonts and so I later suggested the later option too.

They seemed opposed to both (at least during the forum discussion). However, I think this UI feature could be one of the best workflow speed improvements for the average user (many/most of whom probably don’t have time to memorize the hotkeys or just don’t end up doing so) of QCAD!

The gains in efficiency and pleasantness could be enormous potentially, even despite it QCAD already being among the most pleasant and well-designed programs I’ve ever used!

It is far faster to be able to instantly read a hotkey from the UI than to have to wait for a tooltip or to look the keystrokes up in the documentation.

Memorization is the fastest of course, but as someone who finds themselves constantly spread thin over many different programs (often half a dozen or more) for long spans of time I often find it difficult to remember all of the hotkeys for each program I use. Having such hotkeys always visible is useful for users who are spread thin, as many people increasingly in the world of software.

CVH suggested that I make custom icons myself, but doing so seems far worse than simply having QCAD automatically read and then print out the corresponding hotkeys over every tool in a programmatic and properly automated way.

I seriously think this would be one of the most awesome improvement you could ever add to QCAD!

Indeed, there is no missing feature I want more than this one!

Few programs do this but the few cases I’ve seen it the feature was extremely useful for speed without having to take weeks/months/years to fully memorize hotkeys only then forget them later. This idea eliminates that problem!

It would be glorious from a usability and accessibility standpoint! Please implement it!

Hopefully Qt’s GUI system is flexible enough to draw overlaid text over the buttons like this without to much hassle. That is the main potential impediment as I see it.

Anyway though, here is the associated forum discussion where I mentioned this idea. It was the same thread as the one where I also suggested adding a way to control tooltip delays.

Large files/large entities perform bad in QCad. There are many dxf files that are created with thousand of lines that perform reasonable in other cad’s/cam’s that qcad cannot match.

One very useful tool, that could be added would help to improve qcad performance and at the same time enlarge the dxf quality (by replacing thousand of files by arcs), would be a tool called “arc fit” where, when possible and under a determined possible error margin (user selectable) creates arcs replacing the existing lines.
This would improve the file work in QCad also improves CAM software that would work after QCad, that I think is important for many users.

For example, if it is needed to use qcad to generate toolpaths for letters, after exploding letters, the output is almost impossible to work due to the number of lines that are created. Having arcs instead of lines would greatly improve qcad use.

Use case:

• Start tool
• Choose one entity of the contour
• If contour is closed, area of closed contour is calculated an printed in the command line history
• Configuration parameters: segment length for arc interpolation

Arrange points on a plan according to an arithmetical, geometrical, logarithmic, customizable variation of distances

Ziehe ich mit der Maus eine normale Auswahlbox kann ich Elemente markieren.
Möchte ich einzelne Bereiche wieder herausnehmen muss ich alle Elemente einzeln anklicken (mit gedrückter Shift Taste).
Ich kann zwar dies komfortabler gestalten mit der Select → (De -) Select Contour Funktion welche aber erst über das Menue aufgerufen werden muss.

So wie ich einzelne Elemente mit der Maus auswählen und mit der Shift-Maus Funktion deselektieren kann wäre es schön wenn die Shift Taste auch bei Auswahlbereichen direkt zum deselektieren eingesetzt werden könnte.

I tried to assign double click on middle-mouse button to zoomauto command, but it seems it’s not possible currently.

Would love to see this feature.

You can apply the command to Lines, PolyLine segments, Arcs, Circles, and Rings:

For linear entities parallel to an axis of the coordinate system, aligned Dimensions (parallel Dimensions) are created. For linear entities not parallel to an axis of the coordinate system, either aligned Dimensions (measuring the absolute distance between two points) or horizontal or vertical Dimensions (measuring the horizontal or vertical distance between two points) depending on where you move the pointer are created.

For curved entities, you can create radial, diameter, linear, angular, and arc length Dimensions.

To dimension entities:

Click Dimension > Auto (or type AutoDimension).
In the graphics area, select an entity to dimension.
Click to place the dimension line.
To use another dimension type for Circles or Arcs, specify an option:
Diameter. Creates a diameter Dimension.
Radial. Creates a radial Dimension for an Arc or Circle.
Linear. Creates a linear Dimension of the diameter of a Circle or an aligned, horizontal, or vertical Dimension between the end points of an Arc.
Angular. Dimensions the angle between the end points of an Arc.
Arc length. Dimensions an Arc length.
Note: The chosen option is the default the next time you use the AutoDimension command.

When you move the pointer during a linear dimensioning, you can:
Lock. Determines the current dimension type (aligned, horizontal, or vertical) regardless where you move the pointer.
Unlock. Unlocks the type of linear dimension used.
Press Enter.

***
In short, when you use this tool you click on an entity and it will know what dimension you’re looking for. For Circles, you can specify in the command window R or D for Radius or Diameter.
This would be extremely useful on large drawings where a lot of dimensioning is to be done. One tool and start clicking on entities for dimensioning.

it would be ideal to be able to have the option to autohide the side panel to increase the visible drawing space when working on a small screen.

I would like static information of the drawing (like scale, creation-date, modified-date, revision etc) to be available as automatic labels to be placed in the drawing (with selectable style, font etc)

This would greatly simplify the creatin of title sections in the drawing and making sure it is consistent with the actual drawing and not requiring manual “synchronization”.

Automatically set the draw order one lower than the lowest draw order of a border entity when creating a hatch. This should be a user preference, since not everyone might want that behavior.

Andrew,

When switching from Default to Dark mode the text on alternating rows is hardly visible.
We can customize this color.

It would be easier if a proper default color is set on switching to and back.

Perhaps the user preferences can be remembered.
Perhaps only when the contrast would be affected.

Regards,
CVH

Es wäre Arbeitserleichternd wenn ich bei den Optionen für Bemaßungen (Prefix/Postfix) eigene Präferenzen speichern könnte so das diese in allen Zeichnungen von mir verfügbar wären.
Zudem wäre es wünschenswert dieses nicht nur bei den Prefix sondern auch bei den Postfix Angaben nutzen zu können was dann alle(?) Manipulationen erschlagen würde.

Siehe auch:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/rsforum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1966

Clipping bitmaps to only show a part of the image.

See:
http://www.qcad.org/rsforum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=3263

I have created a drawing, where the CENTERS of the most outer lines have a distance of 3.06mm in both X and Y.
The line weight of these outer lines is 0.6mm, so the whole image is 3.06mm + 2* 0.6mm/2 = 3.12mm wide and long (center to center plus half of the line weight on every side).
Additionally in the export there is a frame around the image, making it 3.12 + 2*frame.
The export function however calculates 3.06mm when setting the resolution to 1000Pix/cm, so it does not include the line weights and the outer frame.

It would be nice to have the possibility to select multiple blocks with Shift and/or CTRL + mouse like the Layer List to use a delete etc command on all selected blocks at once.

I would appreciate an option for the library Browser that gives me the possibility to decide by my self to use the current (same name) layer in my drawing or overwrite it with the existing layers in the library item.

Imagine the possibility’s of this feature ....

Wouldn’t it be nice, if selecting a block in model view would somehow highlight (just like clicking a block in the list does) the selected block in the “Block List” window?

(Feature request sounds a little harsh, enhancement proposal would seem more apt.)

Blocks: moving complex blocks with drag and drop should show bounding box as preview

Would it be possible to arrange the Menu, CAD-Toolbar, Toolbar, Menu, Tool Matrix with customized keywords, like “simple”, advanced” and “expert” to show only a minimum for user there are begin with CAD, advanced for CAD-User, and expert for construction.

Add a program description to the CAM configuration dialog and export to postprocessors as variable.

See also:
https://www.qcad.org/rsforum/posting.php?mode=quote&f=32&p=24649

See also:
https://www.qcad.org/rsforum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8342

Hallo Andrew,

Still busy on the never ending G-code story. Urgently needed the very handy G-code Block Toolpath. This ‘toolpath’ also solves a lot of “editing requests”.

Hallo Andrew,

Still busy on the never ending G-code story. Urgently needed the very common Traverse Toolpath.

Example added as pdf.

Greetings

Add support for importing Carbide Create files (.c2d).

Format is JSON based, human readable.

Change a quote value modify the drawing + link quotes with entities

In other words, makes quotes editable AND linked to entities.

• Today in the properties, the value is read only. Being able to edit the value would modify the linked entity properties to fit the new quote.

• Changing a property would change the linked quotes accordingly. Today, if I change a circle diameter which is quoted, the quote remain where it was and is no more relevant.

Automatic change of icons in the Library Browser from black on white to white on black or vice versa depending on the background (white or black; light or dark) in QCAD main window.
See also https://www.qcad.org/rsforum/viewtopic.php?f=31&p=21970#p21970

Hi,

in QCAD3 RC2 points were printed as crosses, in QCAD3 RC4 they are printed as (very little) points. I think this isn’t a bug but a feature.

It would be nice if one could change this behaviour / select the symbol of points.

Best regards - Stefan

This is a double post of http://www.ribbonsoft.com/rsforum/viewtopic.php?p=5870#5870 as suggested there.

An option in the drawing preferences to change the line thicknesses for arch ticks would be a huge plus, at the moment I am having to insert ‘arch tick’ blocks for this.

Changeable color of the selection bar in the layer list.
Now the color of the bar is darkblue and the underlaid icons are black and are not readable.

To have a ‘clean up ' tool to:

- eradicate duplicate lines
- eradicate stray points
- remove empty layers
- remove unused blocks

Perhaps with an initial dialog which allows the user to choose what they want to clean up.

Not sure how difficult this would be to implement but just wondered if it is possible to have an option in QCAD to change the opacity of a colour ?

related to topic: http://www.qcad.org/rsforum/viewtopic.php?f=83&p=15715&sid=45f0f0679e8257f3cf98f91e4f0c4577#p15715

command line arguments: allow class name after -exec

In the comnmand line, I can sucessfully enter for example the radius of a circle to draw (Space 100 Enter) but the command line does not accept a value for the distance when drawing parallel lines (l p space 100 enter → error).

A line with linestyle = dots and line weight = 0.00 appears in model space overly spaced, all other lineweights behave as expected.
Suspect other linestyles to behave in a similar fashion.

See attached drawing.

Suggested fix: use the same scaling for lineweight 0.00 as for lineweight 0.05.

See also:
http://www.qcad.org/rsforum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=2180

Customer wishes that stacked text used as subscript is rendered differently (i.e. increased text size, lower position for subscript).
This may also apply to superscripts.

When dimensioning my drawings I always want the dimensions to be on the dimensions layer.
When adding text I want the text to be on the text layer.
When drawing an infinite line it is always a construction line, therefore I want it to be on the construction line layer.
When drawing a line segment it almost always is on my outline layer.

So I propose a new option to bind certain actions to certain layers.
Whenever those actions are selected the layer should automatically be switched.

I can imagine this being implemented in the General→Tool Settings menu, where the short cuts are defined.

Select lines, arcs, ... and convert them to points along the lines, arcs, ... with a fixed distance.

See also forum at:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/rsforum/viewtopic.php?t=1834