Considering purchasing QCad Professional

[lathanial]

Hi,
I am thinking about purchasing QCad for smaller projects. I have played around with the community edition 2.0.5.0 on Ubuntu 8.04 and I think it is quite useable but I would like to know if the professional version will help me with a few of the problems I found in the community edition.
1.) Does the professional version allow me to add my own blocks to the library - this doesn't seem to work in the community edition? I would really need for this to work.
2.) Does the professional version have an array copy function? Not absolutely necessary but would be very convenient.

Any help or suggested reading appreciated.

lathanial

[andrew]

I have played around with the community edition 2.0.5.0 on Ubuntu 8.04 and I think it is quite useable but I would like to know if the professional version will help me with a few of the problems I found in the community edition.

Please note that we also have free demo version available which is identical to QCad Professional:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/qcad_downloads.html

1.) Does the professional version allow me to add my own blocks to the library - this doesn't seem to work in the community edition? I would really need for this to work.

This should work with both the community edition and QCad Professional. Simply store your own DXF files into the 'library' directory of your QCad installation.

2.) Does the professional version have an array copy function? Not absolutely necessary but would be very convenient.

You might want to use the array function of block inserts for this. If your items are not blocks, you will have to use the regular copy function twice with multiple copies.

[lathanial]

Thanks for the quick response. I will try out the demo.

I can see and use the blocks in the parts library that came with the install but I haven't had any luck with my own blocks. I changed ownership of /usr/share/qcad/libraries so that I could save my DXF files there but they don't show up in the Library Browser - they do show up and are reusable in the block list but aren't available in a new file. I noticed the other entries were paired with a .dat file so I tried creating one but that didn't help. I also tried changing the paths in application preference. It would let me make the change but had no effect on where the Library Browser went. The path reverted back to /usr/share/qcad/libraries on restart. Of course it is entirely possible that I have something screwed up. As I said, I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 and installed QCad by way of the Synaptic Package Manager. I searched Ubuntu forums for anything related to my problem but didn't find anything.

The array function for block inserts works great. I haven't gotten used to watching the option tool bar yet so I missed that.

[andrew]

The QCad Community edition is often packed with Linux distributions. Some Linux distributors spread the files of QCad around on the system, thereby preventing QCad from finding its files. I recommend you try the demo and keep the QCad application in one folder (e.g. /opt/qcad or /home/myname/qcad).

[lathanial]

Well andrew,
You sold me. I'll place my order today

Thanks for you help
lathanial

[Amitaibu_]

I'm unable to download the demo for several days. Can you confirm this? - Windows XP, 2000, Vista (Installer)

[andrew]

We're having hundreds of downloads every day, as usual. There were no known problems with our infrastructure in the last months.

What kind of error are you experiencing?

[Amitaibu_]

On windows I'm unable to download it (FF3 & IE7). It works ok when downloading with Ubuntu.

[andrew]

What kind of error are you experiencing (error message, warning, timeout, etc)?

[Amitaibu_]

Sorry, - timeout. It shows for a long time as it is downloading, but download remains on 0%, and then I get the timeout error.

[andrew]

Thanks. This could have something to do with your location. If there are too many routers between you and our server, the Internet packages might be dropped before they reach you. It is perfectly possible that it works just fine under Linux but not under Windows, since Linux and Windows are use different default parameters for the transfer.

Unfortunately, there is not much we can do about this, but thanks for the information.