- Status Assigned
- Percent Complete
- Task Type Feature Request
- Category QCAD (main)
-
Assigned To
Andrew - Operating System All
- Severity Low
- Priority Very Low
- Reported Version 3.29.4
- Due in Version Undecided
-
Due Date
Undecided
- Votes
- Private
Opened by WraithGlade - 18.02.2024
Last edited by WraithGlade - 18.02.2024
FS#2528 - Add cycles (a.k.a. turns or revolutions) to the available units for angular dimensions options.
Hello, I recently bought QCAD Pro and this is my first Bugtracker report!
First, I want to say a big thank you for creating and maintaining such a wonderful software package!
I’ve never encountered a system for expressing constraints in 2D (or even 3D) that feels as natural, intuitive, and expressive as QCAD feels!
I am very grateful to have randomly found it somehow. I wish all user interfaces were designed this way and especially that vector art programs adopted similar constraint-based tools.
Anyway though, here’s the actual feature suggestion:
I noticed that QCAD is missing one especially convenient and naturally occuring angular unit: cycles (a.k.a. turns or revolutions).
I personally find cycles to be my favorite unit overall and to be the most intuitive to work with (when not needing to use physical protractors). I actually mostly work digitally and most of my uses for QCAD will be digital. QCAD is the only software I’ve found that really expresses 2D constraints the way I want to be able to work and lay things out.
Rather than redundantly belabor the many reasons why I think cycles should added to the available displayed angle units in the Preferences → Dimension Settings → Angular Dimensions dropdown list, I will simply link to the rather large discussion I’ve already had with Husky and CVH arguing my case about why I want it added and why many other users could benefit from it.
Here’s the link to the relevant forum discussion.
Handling 0-1 Tau aka cycle, turn or revolution as additional input format would be feasible. See RMath::eval
Proposed suffix: t or T
In the end it will always be converted to degrees and handled as radians internally.
Input fields and thus properties use degrees.
Regards,
CVH
Yeah, that sounds like it'd be a useful suffix to have, especially considering that tau is gradually becoming more popular in math, engineering, and tech (it seems that way to me, anyway).
Having both that input unit and also displayed cycle units in the status bar like the other Angular Dimensions angle units would be cool for those of us who only have instantaneous number sense for percentages and not for degrees.
I can use degrees fine of course, but every now and then I forget which degree values correspond to what proportion along the circle they are. The most common correspondences are easy to remember, but much less so for in-between degree values.
Yeah, it makes sense that internally they'd use radians internally. The external displayed outputs and input is/was what my suggestion is about though.
Anyway, thanks for your input!
I think your idea for a tau unit is smart and will be helpful going forward as more people use tau more often. Change in the world of math conventions is very slow though, admittedly.