QCAD.org Forum

Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to create some drawings that conform to Australian Standard 1100 for Technical Drawing. Part of the Standard is that certain line widths are recommended for the final printed page. The line widths are specified according to page size (e.g. A4, A3, etc.), and not by the scale of the drawing.

So far, my work flow has been as follows:
1. Create the drawing with layers that are specific to certain line widths.
2. When the drawing is complete, decide on a scale with the Print Preview.
3. Adjust the line widths (on a layer-by-layer basis) so that they will appear as required in the final printed output. (e.g. if the scale is 1:10, the line widths must be scaled by 10.0 so that they are printed at their nominal sizes).
4. Adjust text sizes, etc., in a similar fashion. (The "proportional" option helps a lot here!)

This works OK for most parts of the drawing, but I would then like to add a drawing border. However, my border template has many different line sizes. When I scale the border using the scale tool, the line sizes remain the same as they were originally, and a lot of extra work is required to adjust them.

Is there any better approach to this? Ideally, I would like to be able to tell QCad: "Draw this line with a width of 0.25mm on the printed page." It seems that I must jump through a lot of extra hoops in order to have the line widths relative to the printed page (as the standard requires), rather than relative to the space that the drawing occupies.

Thanks,

Jonathan Merritt.

lancelet wrote:2. When the drawing is complete, decide on a scale with the Print Preview.

This is where I see the main problem. The drawing scale has to be decided before the drawing is started. The drawing scale is then almost cast in stone and cannot be changed anymore without a significant effort. Line widths and dimension sizes are not the only things that are affected by the drawing scale.

The drawing scale determines the way how things are arranged in a drawing, the distance between text labels and your drawing, the size of text labels, the border, the scale of hatch patterns, etc. Unlike other documents, drawings have a fixed scale and that scale should be decided as part of the planning, before the drawing is started.

If you do need to print a drawing at different scales, you would have to create one separate drawing for each scale.

The drawing scale has to be decided before the drawing is started.

OK. I can work with this, if it's the recommended approach for QCad. I guess it has always been the way that drawings have been created by hand at least.

I was just wondering if there were other options. Some other packages I've used separated the scaling of drawings from the scaling of "markup elements" like dimensions, notes, etc. An example is SolidWorks. (I'm using QCad Professional for private stuff, and SolidWorks at work... and it's truly amazing how great QCad is considering it's very low cost! )

Thanks,

Jonathan Merritt.

Hi,

quote from the manual:

4.9
Unlike in manual drafting, there is no need in CAD to determine in advance the sheet size and drawing scale

Secondly, in 'Current Drawing Preferences' -> 'Dimensions' the "Keep Proportions" setting is not kept after closing the dialog.

I really like the idea of just drawing i.e. a chair or a cupboard or whatever, all in 1:1 scale and to decide later about the size of the printer or plotter.

mike