QCAD.org Forum

According to the changelog for version 3.9.3 the info tools and coordinate display are tied to the current drawing dimensions. For much of my use I prefer to have the dimensions format different. The main reason is that my customers want to see the format in fractions, but when I am drawing I'd rather see the decimal format to make sure what I am drawing is accurate. So I'd really be interested in seeing a separate full configuration of the display and info coordinates.

I do recognize that it is possible to change them, but it's not that convenient to do, additionally as I automate creating prints, it might be a bit tricky to make sure that the dimensions are properly formatted when running the dwg2pdf tool.

I've added a feature request at:
http://www.qcad.org/bugtracker/index.ph ... sk_id=1549

I'd like to add my vote to this feature.

I mostly use Qcad to draw guitars and other luthiery related items. In the wonderful world of luthiery it is customary to mix metric and imperial measurements when talking about different parts of instruments. Bizarre and irritating it is but nevertheless the norm within the community. For example, the dimensions of classical guitars, being historically a european instrument, are usually expressed in millimetres whereas steel string guitars, having been developed in America, use Imperial.

To add to the confusion, certain dimensions such as scale lengths, string thickesses etc. are invariably expressed in inches even in otherwise metric using countries. It is not unusual to see both thousandths of an inch, fractional inches and millimetres on the same guitar plan - in fact it is expected!

I would find it very useful when drawing in millimetres, to optionally add ' mm' after each dimension as a default. It seems it is currently only possible to see the measurement type when using inches? I would also find it useful to override any given dimension display to thousands of an inch or fractional inch (or whatever) and have Qcad automatically calculate the conversion.

Cheers
Ian

Hi guys - I'm sitting in the same boat like you and can't wait to see the mentioned feature request implemented.

Till then I like to share my workarounds. Not perfect but maybe helpful ...

bluefuzz wrote:It seems it is currently only possible to see the measurement type when using inches?

Correct. But you can "trick" QCAD
If you launch the Dim Tool an option bar pops up. Use the Label field and fill in

<> mm

<> means QCAD has to write in the measured Value and mm is just a suffix for this Value ...

That looks like this:

bluefuzz wrote:I would also find it useful to override any given dimension display to thousands of an inch or fractional inch (or whatever) and have Qcad automatically calculate the conversion.

Maybe there are more possibility's than you thought ...

Changing the dimensions from 5 ¾ to 5.75 is possible within the Drawing Preferences (Fraction/Decimal),
Change and convert the units (mm to inch etc) during you are working on a drawing is possible with Menu / Edit / Convert Drawing Unit,
Working in mm and in need to but an additional value in in inch can be done by scaling the value ....
... or afterwards with help of the Property Editors.
Hope this brief Info helps .....

Thanks Husky. Those are some good tricks that will certainly help the flexibility of dimensioning for me. But some more robust application tools would still be appreciated.