QCAD.org Forum

Hi everyone,
many of the library items which I create are a combination of other library items. Sometimes I have to explode the item to exchange a table and I would like to avoid that i get everything in lines, curves, etc. The question for me is how does QCAD work internally - to avoid that it is not working.
Example - I take a machine, three safety fences and two tables from the library and create a new library item from this. Later I take this new item and explode it to change one table and want to get the original library items as blocks not as single pieces. Would this work all the time? How does QCAD save the combined library item? Is this just links to the single library items - in that case it would be a desaster if I rename the single library items later on.
Maybe a picture makes this easier to understand - on the left hand you see the single library items and on the right the new combined one.

Nothing is linked. Each library item contains the complete definition for all the blocks it uses.

Problems occur if one library item has a block "A" with a different content than a block "A" in another library item.
When inserting a library item, you can choose in the options toolbar if you want to overwrite (i.e. update) existing blocks in your drawing or keep your own blocks.

Hi,

Rantanplan7 wrote:Sometimes I have to explode the item to exchange a table and I would like to avoid that i get everything in lines, curves, etc.

In the case that your Library Item contains multiple Blocks make sure to use the Explode tool only ones on that inserted item. That will break it down to single blocks.

Thanks Husky,
yes I'm aware of that. I have that negative experience only from symbols which are old and which I haven't created. So I have no idea what my colleague has done wrong.
However at the moment it is only me who is responsible for the symbol library which I have imported from Autosketch 10.
Another question where I couldn't get a good answer from Goggle and co. - which is the better file extension dxf or dwg? And which is the best revision to save a drawing? I got the experience that R32 isn't very good as not many other programs can work with it and not everyone is keeping his software up to date.

Rantanplan7 wrote:... which is the better file extension dxf or dwg? And which is the best revision to save a drawing? I got the experience that R32 isn't very good as not many other programs can work with it and not everyone is keeping his software up to date.

A www searching should bring up a lot of information ...
Long story short: dxf is the much more common file format than dwg. Mostly all dwg systems are able to read dxf too but not that many dxf systems are able to read dwg.
R32? Yes - same here! For compatibility reason I use still R27 ...

The www search has brought me a lot information about the two file extensions but it wasn't very helpful in deciding which one is the better and mostly used one. So thanks for that.