Possible New User: Question About Menus/Icons

[Chips&Chips]

Again, I am coming from FastCAD and one feature a love and made extensive use of there was the ability to rearrange and add to the drop-down and icon-bar menus. I wrote a number of macros to implement things like polygons by different types of sizing and at arbitrary angles, sequential entry of text (T-01, T-02, T-03, etc)., and other tasks that I found performing over and over. These macros were then executed via either drop-down menu items that I added or via icons that I created and added to the icon bars. I was even able to replace the original icons, that I found hard to see, with icons of my own creation for the original drawing commands. I used contrasting color schemes to group the icons by the type of action they invoked. That was a big help.

It seems that QCAD has a scripting language, but can I use that with new menu items or icons that I create? And can I replace your menus and icons with my own?

[CVH]

Hi,
You can not rearrange common tools in the menus or in the toolbars.
The order of things is predefined in GroupSortOrder & SortOrder in the initialization of these tools.
Even harder for script developers as there is no recent and/or current overview of these sorting orders.

You can lookup these orders on GitHub for the open source part (QCAD CE).
QCAD PRO tools are proprietary and not listed there.
Some pro tools orders can be found by a textual search in the QCAD installation folder.

For CE tools it is possible to supersede them with a copy under the scripts folder.
And then it is possible to alter sorting orders knowing what and where.
-> If you start with doing that then I think you will not know where to end.
This is also the only method to my knowledge to include different icons.

Maybe it is possible to alter all parameters for all RGuiAction's.
First hurdle would be a list of things.

I rather supersede scripts for changing the functionality of standard tools.
For example my Move/Copy (MV) tool always reverts to 'Move' before usage and the rest is kept as it is.
In most cases I move things, only in very rare cases I copy things with this tool, I rather duplicate.
I can still tick copy in the Options Toolbar or use the dialog when I want to.
Or superseded to enhance the functionality, for example: https://www.qcad.org/rsforum/viewtopic. ... 168#p40155

You can include QCAD tools in two user defined toolbars but again you can not change the order of things.
See menu Edit .. Application Preferences .. General .. Tool Settings .. Visibility per tool.

Altering the tool 2(3) key shortcuts is possible but there is not much room to play in, you quickly get conflicts with other tools.
An overview can be found here: https://www.ribbonsoft.com/archives/sho ... uts_en.pdf

It is possible to add menus, sub-menus and probably even toolbars.


I think the focus should be on using QCAD for drafting instead of tranforming QCAD to look and feel just like FastCAD.

Regards,
CVH

[andrew]

You can add your favourite tools to the two user toolbars under:

Edit > Application Preferences > General > Tool Settings

Simply tick "User toolbar 1" or "User toolbar 2" for your favourite tools and enable these two toolbars under

View > Toolbars and Widgets > Toolbars > User toolbar 1 / User toolbar 2

[CVH]

You can add your favourite tools to the two user toolbars under:

I think that I covered that but I am about sure that you can not rearrange the order of things.

Regards,
CVH

[andrew]

I was even able to replace the original icons, that I found hard to see, with icons of my own creation for the original drawing commands. I used contrasting color schemes to group the icons by the type of action they invoked.

You can override icons by creating your own theme:

In your QCAD folder, under themes, create a new folder "MyTheme", e.g.:

C:\Program Files\QCAD\themes\MyTheme

And a folder "icons":

C:\Program Files\QCAD\themes\MyTheme\icons

Place your custom icons in folder "icons". E.g. an icon file "Line2P.svg" will override the icon for the tool to draw lines from two points, where "Line2P" is the action name or script name. You can find a list of all action names in the about dialog under "Scripts".

You can find the original icon files for the QCAD open source part in our repository at:
https://github.com/qcad/qcad/tree/master/scripts

For example, the icon for the line tool:
https://github.com/qcad/qcad/blob/maste ... Line2P.svg

You can then change the theme to "MyTheme" under:
Edit > Application Preferences > General > Theme

If you can send me an example of what works for you or a screenshot of your icons from the other software, I might be able to create a high contrast theme for you. This might also be useful for other users.

[Chips&Chips]

Thanks to both of you for the quick responses. Quite a bit to digest so I will be looking at it several times, for sure.

One quick comment, I do not intend to make the program I choose work like FastCAD. That would be absurd and take an awful lot of work. But I would like to have the ability to work faster in some respects.

More later, I am sure.

But, thanks again.

[Chips&Chips]

"The order of things" is one phrase that I did not completely understand in your answers. Do you literally mean the order that items appear in menus or tool bars? Being unable to change that order does not seem like too much of a handicap. Or are you referring to some other order?

You can add your favourite tools to the two user toolbars under:

I think that I covered that but I am about sure that you can not rearrange the order of things.

Regards,
CVH

[CVH]

But I would like to have the ability to work faster in some respects.

I think that you find QCAD very intuitive and once you know most of the 2(3) key shortcuts it will be fast.
The learning curve may be steep to start with, sure, but that is the same for every new application of this format.

Regards,
CVH

[CVH]

"The order of things" is one phrase that I did not completely understand in your answers.

I am coming from FastCAD and one feature a love and made extensive use of there was the ability to rearrange and add to the drop-down and icon-bar menus.

You can not rearrange common tools in the menus or in the toolbars.

Where menus appear and where tools appear in the menus and the toolbars is predefined.

Regards,
CVH

[CVH]

You can find a list of all action names in the about dialog under "Scripts".

It is thus as simple as creating +600 new icons per Theme including all pro features.
And somewhat less because not all scripts need or include an icon file.

Regards,
CVH

[Chips&Chips]

...<snip>...

If you can send me an example of what works for you or a screenshot of your icons from the other software, I might be able to create a high contrast theme for you. This might also be useful for other users.

Andrew, here is a screen shot, as you requested. It is large so I did not insert it in this text, but it should be attached. I am new here so if it did not come through, please let me know and I will try again.

I wrote some notes in the drawing area with arrows pointing, more or less, to the tool bars they talk about. I also dropped one top menu down and selected an item that I was able to add with a bunch of commands to draw various geometric shapes with specific numbers of sides, angular rotations and located by different features (a side, the center, etc.). So, for instance, I can draw a pentagon which fits inside of a 1" circle and that has one vertex at a 17.3 degree angle to horizontal, all with ONE command. Most CAD programs would require a bunch of steps like drawing several radii/diameters of that circle, connecting their ends, combining those lines into a pentagon, and then rotating that pentagon to the angle needed. This is another example of the utility of being able to add commands that I found to be time saving.

PS: I like your attitude. Your posts have me looking more towards QCAD and away from LibreCAD, which I am also considering.

[Chips&Chips]

By the way, not only does FastCAD provide almost complete control of what is in all the toolbars, but it also allows the user to choose which side of the screen they appear on. This is done with simple text files that configure them.

[andrew]

Thanks. I can see that you have put a lot of work into customizing your user interface with FastCAD. May I ask what the reason is that you are contemplating moving away from FastCAD? It doesn't look like an unsupported product judging by their website.


You can adjust quite literally everything in QCAD using scripts as QCAD gives you full access to the complete QCAD and Qt APIs. It's always a question of whether the effort would be justifiable.

Creating your own tools for often used shapes is definitely possible. All of QCAD's own tools are implemented as scripts on that level.

Also, if you don't mind me asking: do you have any kind of visual impairment that the yellow / blue backgrounds work better for you? I could easily create a theme with all icons having a yellow or blue background if that helps in any way.

[CVH]

Hi,
Looking at the screenshot, I think that QCAD icons already excel compared to the low resolution 16x16 pictos you're used to.

For the rest I see a lot of custom build tools, macros probably.
QCAD does not support the creation of macros, all is done by add-on scripts and then the associated icon is fairly up to you.

The re-location of Toolbars (and Widgets) is as simple as picking them up and dropping them elsewhere.
Some to more toolbars/Widgets are not visible in a standard installation:
- See menu View .. Toolbars and Widgets .. Toolbars
- Right click in the menu/toolbar area.

Catolog... DWG Syms is something that resembles the QCAD Library Browser.

May I ask what the reason is that you are contemplating moving away from FastCAD?

The pricing probably [$595]: https://www.fastcad.com/
But then I can not understand this phrase in another topic:

Now that company seems to be no longer and there is no support for the FastCAD or EasyCAD programs and their file formats.

Digging deeper:
The only screen shot I found looks just like yours: https://fastcad.com/about.php

It doesn't look like an unsupported product judging by their website.

Altough the site displays the current date I found this latest news:
New Product Versions 6.58.00 and 7.58.00 (posted 28-June-2014) Now Available
That is about 9 years old.


Regards,
CVH

[John Hyslop]

Hi All

On the same subject, I would like to know how I can add these icons to the existing blank
icons shown on my "User Toolbar 1"....

IconsQuestion.png (44.89 KiB) Viewed 6718 times

I know I can save them to svg but when the scripts are embedded into a release is there a way to do this?
The two buttons are "Make All White Layers Black" & Make All Black Layers White"

Icons.png (2.5 KiB) Viewed 6718 times

Cheers
John Hyslop..

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