A Few Issiues

[koosjr]

I used QCAD 3 for my first project today, and I have some mixed feelings about it. Quite a few things that IMHO work perfectly in the older QCADs were tampered with.

That said, it runs quite stable of both Windows and Mageia Linux - the latter which is not supported.


Bugs as follows:

1. Move and Rotate function moves, but does not rotate.

2. Text sizes are not remembered. One has to type in the text size after each pressing of the text function.

3. The properties box of the the "Text" function does not honour if one changes the "Text" value.


Observations:

1. There seems to be little or no improvement in speed. In fact, I find QCAD 3 quite a bit more lazy than QCAD 2 when opening drawings or when zooming in on big drawings. I was under the impression that this would get some particular attention.


Good Things tampered with and with all of these changes, I cannot see the logic or benefit in the change. QCAD is IMO now worse off and in all the cases, it is minor little things that made QCAD so fluent to draw with:

1. Printing is now a real chore. Why is the automatic centre and automatic fit functions removed? That was an extremely handy function and on some drawings I am not able to even find the page to move it to the right position.

2. The "Application Preferences" is still in the menu, but "Drawing Preferences" is now gone and only available once the "Print Preview" is activated.

3. While the new menu buttons [i]looks[i] a bit different, the old style true buttons looks, was a lot more clear. Now there are different styles, but none that gives the "button" look back.

4. With the new "properties" window on the side, consistency was lost. In the old QCADs, all the functions parameters - including the "text" function - the toolbar with the fields that could be changed, was there.

5. It seems that the function for "persistent selections" are gone. Once gain, why on earth omit it?


Now the main function: DWG support. I could open many DWG files fairly well and this support is certainly super! But it is slow.

Also, while an attempt was made to have "viewport" support, I am stunned that "layout" support was not included. I mean it is all there - the layouts items reflects as blocks in QCAD. Is it really so much effort to support that. Layout support alone will give QCAD a lot of appeal since that is a core feature of Autocad, but combined with the intuitive interface of QCAD it can only be a winner.

[andrew]

koosjr: Thanks for your feedback. As always, please indicate your version of QCAD (Beta, Beta 2, Beta 3) and operating system. From your feedback, I assume that you are using an older beta version, not the latest QCAD Beta 3.

First, I'd like to explain what has happened over the last few years:

We have not 'removed' anything from QCAD 2. The fact is that QCAD 3 is a complete new product. A rewrite was simply necessary due to the limits of the QCAD 2 architecture and its dependency on old libraries. Some QCAD 2 features are still about to be re-added but we are already collecting feedback from users with the QCAD 3 beta versions.

Some of the biggest changes of QCAD 3 are invisible to the user: most importantly, QCAD 3 is 100% scriptable. You can easily automate just about anything in QCAD 3. This is a huge step forward for some QCAD users but I understand it might not offer any short term benefits for others. Long term benefits are that new CAD tools, widgets and add-ons will emerge and even new CAD related products, based on QCAD 3 technology.

1. Move and Rotate function moves, but does not rotate.

This tipped me off that you might not be using the latest beta since this was fixed for QCAD 3 Beta 3.

2. Text sizes are not remembered. One has to type in the text size after each pressing of the text function.

Known issue:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... &project=1

3. The properties box of the the "Text" function does not honour if one changes the "Text" value.

I'm assuming that the 'properties box' is the property editor and by 'Text value' you mean the value for property 'Contents'. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

You can change the contents of a text entity by changing the value of property 'Contents' and press Enter when you're done or Tab to go to the next property or click somewhere outside the editable text field.

1. There seems to be little or no improvement in speed. In fact, I find QCAD 3 quite a bit more lazy than QCAD 2 when opening drawings or when zooming in on big drawings. I was under the impression that this would get some particular attention.

This might depend somewhat on the drawing. Large drawings with lots of relatively small entities that are about equally spread perform a lot better with QCAD 3. Drawings with lots of large, complex blocks might not profit at all. QCAD 3 has a spatial index, so all operations that look up entities based on location perform a lot faster than in QCAD 2 (selection, highlighting, contour selection, area selection, etc). Performance might be further improved along the way. If you have a drawing you feel is slower to operate on in any way, please feel free to send it to us, so we can check options to improve the performance.

Why is the automatic centre and automatic fit functions removed?

See remark at the top. This function will come back eventually:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... ask_id=326

2. The "Application Preferences" is still in the menu, but "Drawing Preferences" is now gone and only available once the "Print Preview" is activated.

You can find it under 'File' - 'Drawing Preferences' since drawing preferences belong to the file that is open. Possibly takes some time to get used to.

3. While the new menu buttons [i]looks[i] a bit different, the old style true buttons looks, was a lot more clear. Now there are different styles, but none that gives the "button" look back.

Is this about the icons on the buttons or the buttons themselves? Please note that the look of buttons and other GUI elements depends on and is defined by your operating system, window manager or chosen desktop theme.

4. With the new "properties" window on the side, consistency was lost. In the old QCADs, all the functions parameters - including the "text" function - the toolbar with the fields that could be changed, was there.

The text options tool bar might also be a candidate to come back:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... ask_id=327

We feel that the property editor is one of the biggest improvements of QCAD 3. It is much more powerful and complete than the property editor in QCAD 2 and probably simply needs (and deserves) a second look.

5. It seems that the function for "persistent selections" are gone. Once gain, why on earth omit it?

I've added a feature request:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... ask_id=328

Again: this function was not omitted or removed but simply not yet implemented again.

Now the main function: DWG support. I could open many DWG files fairly well and this support is certainly super! But it is slow.

QCAD 3 Beta 3 has improved that for drawings with many blocks. I'm starting to suspect that your drawings might have many blocks, is that correct?

Also, while an attempt was made to have "viewport" support, I am stunned that "layout" support was not included. I mean it is all there - the layouts items reflects as blocks in QCAD. Is it really so much effort to support that. Layout support alone will give QCAD a lot of appeal since that is a core feature of Autocad, but combined with the intuitive interface of QCAD it can only be a winner.

Feature request:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... ask_id=264

For future bug reports and feature requests, you might want to use our bug tracker directly:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... &project=1

[koosjr]

koosjr: Thanks for your feedback. As always, please indicate your version of QCAD (Beta, Beta 2, Beta 3) and operating system. From your feedback, I assume that you are using an older beta version, not the latest QCAD Beta 3.

Indeed. I am using Beta 2 so I will download the new version quickly.

So this means one or two of my issues are resolved already.

Some of the biggest changes of QCAD 3 are invisible to the user: most importantly, QCAD 3 is 100% scriptable. You can easily automate just about anything in QCAD 3.

WOW! Does that mean that I could for example have a duct designer and constructer in QCAD? There is a big demand in our profession for that and the tools on the market all runs on AutoCAD, but many are not that great for the price..

I'm assuming that the 'properties box' is the property editor and by 'Text value' you mean the value for property 'Contents'. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

That is correct. The "Contents" box does not honour a change.

You can change the contents of a text entity by changing the value of property 'Contents' and press Enter when you're done or Tab to go to the next property or click somewhere outside the editable text field.

Perhaps fixed in Beta 3, but it does not work in Beta 2.

See remark at the top. This function will come back eventually:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... ask_id=326

Thanks!!

You can find it under 'File' - 'Drawing Preferences' since drawing preferences belong to the file that is open. Possibly takes some time to get used to.

I here you, but I still think it was better the other way because one now know explicitly that you set global or local preferences. The two belongs together.

Is this about the icons on the buttons or the buttons themselves? Please note that the look of buttons and other GUI elements depends on and is defined by your operating system, window manager or chosen desktop theme.

OK, Will check that out and see. I just noticed that the "buttons" looks OK on my Windows machine.

The text options tool bar might also be a candidate to come back:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... ask_id=327

All that we need to do, is to change the text easily, and perhaps even the size. Then one can continue with texing without another few clicks.

We feel that the property editor is one of the biggest improvements of QCAD 3. It is much more powerful and complete than the property editor in QCAD 2 and probably simply needs (and deserves) a second look.

Will do so!

QCAD 3 Beta 3 has improved that for drawings with many blocks. I'm starting to suspect that your drawings might have many blocks, is that correct?

Some of them does have yes. Comes from the architect and they seems to fail to understand what blocks are for. So now one has 100 identical items, on 100 different blocks, instead of 1 block used 100 times.



Thanks again for your quick reply. QCAD even in Beta, still works great.

I hate AutoCAD.

[andrew]

WOW! Does that mean that I could for example have a duct designer and constructer in QCAD? There is a big demand in our profession for that and the tools on the market all runs on AutoCAD, but many are not that great for the price..

If you are willing to develop one using ECMAScript (JavaScript) or you find someone who can develop one, yes. One can develop any kind of applications with the QCAD Application Framework since practically the whole Qt tool kit (qt.nokia.com) is available to scripts, extended with CAD specific modules.

You can find a brief overview of some modules that are available as part of our API documentation:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/doc/qcad/3.0/ ... scope.html