QCAD Bugtracker

Hi,
I can confirm that using Surveyor's units there is nothing displayed for the angular dimensions.

We do understand Andrew's note:
I have to admit I'm not even sure if that would make any sense at all since surveyor's angles are absolute directions

And there are two distinct Surveyor's types:
Azimuth and bearing.
Both are orientations and not meaningful for enclosed angles.

For orientations they are supported, examples are given in:
https://www.qcad.org/rsforum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=10635#p43701

Surveyor's units are not listed for DIMAUNIT
https://help.autodesk.com/view/ACD/2023/ENU/?guid=GUID-30F44A49-4250-42D1-AEF2-5E2914ADB02B

Further issue is that some applications use 3 for radians and other use 4.
zero based it is then 0-1-2-3 or 0-1-2-4 ....?!
Yet other applications use all 5 from zero to 4
https://www.progesoft.com/products/progecad-professional/manual?mp=system-variables/dimaunit

IMHO Andrew should remove the option from the list.
Or we should look over the hedge and mimic what other applications do with it.

Regards,
CVH

Good to see a confirmation that it is not just my computer.

I did look online for surveyor's units related content and found this related AutoCAD page that shows at least one form of how they (AutoCAD) display the units.

If there are multiple forms of the units then it does sound like either (1) multiple variants of surveyor's units should be added as options, (2) one variant should be chosen as a default (accepting the imperfection of not covering all cases), or (3) it should be removed to avoid confusion like you've suggested.

Normally I'd always advise not looking much at competitor's stuff out of fear of copying infringing material. However, I doubt one could be sued just from having the same format as a standard unit used in the profession. I think that probably falls well outside of copyright, trademark, and patents and thus is probably safe.

That's just my own thought as a newbie though.

I've never used surveyor's units personally and was just curious about trying them out for fun.

Thanks for the detailed commentary. I've definitely learned a few new things today with your helpful info!

The use of surveyor units you are referring to has to do with orientations.
QCAD handles these inputs with the same ease, converting them to degrees.
All angular properties are displayed in degrees.

Regards,
CVH

Hmmm, I've yet to get surveyor's units to display anywhere in QCAD.

Is there any context at all where setting surveyor's units for the Angular Dimensions options causes anything to change other than the angle measurements no longer being displayed in the status bar?

Even when using information or dimensions tools with surveyor's units on, I can't get anything substantive to ever show for surveyor's units.

We agreed that Angular surveyor's units don't display for dimensions.
But they can be use to enter orientations.

From the link:
Top picture displays the distance and bearing values on a site plan.
Step 3 explains how to enter that as @50.71'<N80d04'30"E in ACAD.

This angular notation can be used in QCAD in a similar way to input an angle.
Nowhere in the link is shown how ACAD displays this as dimension.

From the ACAD link about DIMAUNIT it can't because it is not included.

Regards,
CVH

Yes, but inputing surveyor's units in the command prompt (and also in the input fields in the GUI for angles) works regardless of what Angular Dimensions one has set in the application or drawing preferences.

That's why it confuses me.

I still haven't been able to identify a single thing the setting actually does except to cause the angle measurements for the status bar, all dimensions, and all information tools to become blank.

Basically, I was trying to figure out if the setting does anything helpful anywhere currently.

I can only confirm that using Surveyor's units there is nothing rendered for the angular dimensions. The measured value is correct (degrees), the Label is empty.
Exploding the dimension results in an empty text entity.

Regards,
CVH