QCAD.org Forum

I've been through the help, tried online seaches, and gone through this forum but to no avail. If this question has been asked before please accept my appologies.

Scenario: Most of my drawings are either architectural or construction and they have to be in imperial units. Futhermore they have to be expressed in terms of feet and inches as opposed to feet and decimal fractions of a foot. For example: people I work with are incapable intuitively understanding that 15'3" is the same thing as 15.25'.

Problem: I use the "snap to grid" feature pretty heavily to ensure my drawings are accurate. However, the dynamic grid zoom seems to work only on base 10. For example: I am currently looking at a worksheet where the grid is represented as : 0", 10",1'8", 2'6",3'4",4'2",5'0" ... and so on. In order to ensure my lines snap to the appropriate grid line I end up having to zoom way to finish a line.

Question: Is there a way to have the grid to zoom as whole increments of feet and then when it starts to zoom in to inches have the grid switch over to base 12: For example, as I progresively zoom in the first grid increment would be 6", zooming in my grid increment would be 3", zooming in further would give me a grid increment of 1". Similarly if I zoom out from the starting position where my grid increment is in single feet, the next increment up is 5', for example, and etc.. Right now, where I have to capture drawings with dimmensions as large as 100-200' I have to zoom down to the fractions of an inch just to snap to 178', for example.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Forgot to add

QCAD version: 3.2.2
Operating System: Linux Mint 16

Hi!

First of all - I'm not a big "Grid designer" (in general not for large constructions which has to be precisely) but maybe we can figured out some kind of solution for you.

Step by step:

thehand wrote:For example: people I work with are incapable intuitively understanding that 15'3" is the same thing as 15.25'.

Yes - I know what you are talking about .....

thehand wrote:Problem: I use the "snap to grid" feature pretty heavily to ensure my drawings are accurate. However, the dynamic grid zoom seems to work only on base 10. For example: I am currently looking at a worksheet where the grid is represented as : 0", 10",1'8", 2'6",3'4",4'2",5'0" ... and so on. In order to ensure my lines snap to the appropriate grid line I end up having to zoom way to finish a line.

I'm not sure but let me ask you: You are aware of the possibility to set up your own Grid standards?
I changed my Grid parameter regarding to your question. Would this work better for you?

If I zoom out the same drawing it looks like this:
What do you think?

Thank you for looking into it.

Yes, I have experimented with the Grid settings and that works if I'm working solely in inches. The problem is that if I zoom out the grid scale goes as base 10 as opposed to base 12. Thus, If I am looking at a 30' wide drawing space I have to zoom in to find the 6'6" grid point.

Forget what I said. I missed the Metagrid entry below. This seems to work fine. Thank you very much.

Having a base 12 increment seems to cause some problems for QCAD. The ruler at times seems to want to stick to base 10 which results in ruler ticks not corresponding to visual grid points.

thehand wrote:Having a base 12 increment seems to cause some problems for QCAD. The ruler at times seems to want to stick to base 10 which results in ruler ticks not corresponding to visual grid points.

I work with the newest version of QCad (3.6.3.0) and it seems to me that the grid and the Ruler ticks are lined up in all zoom levels. Could you attach a screen-shot what will show the problem?

When have you purchased QCAD? QCAD 3.2.2 was released 2013/08/22. Maybe you are still in the position to get a free update. Hurry up!

I downloaded the latest demo version but still the same problem. Note the ruler in the attached image. It's trying really hard display what should be 12 increments in 10 increments. Also, if I zoom out the ruler dissapears.

Thanks for the image!

thehand wrote:I downloaded the latest demo version but still the same problem. Note the ruler in the attached image. It's trying really hard display what should be 12 increments in 10 increments. Also, if I zoom out the ruler dissapears.

Now I was able to reproduce this behavior.
I assume that I now used the same setting like you for the Dim Label Format: "Engineering, 0'-0.0" / Grid settings: Grid 1, Meta Grid 12, / Drawing unit: inch,

And yes you are right - with this settings the ruler ticks are not lined up with the Grid points and the ruler will disappear at a certain zoom level.
Long story short: I think that is a bug and I will file a bug report.

For now maybe a workaround: Have you ever tried to use instead of the "Engineering" Label Format the "Architectural" Label Format?
The Grid/Ruler is then lined up and the ruler stays for all zoom levels ...

Thanks! This is very helpful.