Hello

Post to this forum to introduce yourself to this forum if you are new here. You might want to include some information about the work you are doing or planning to do with QCAD.

Moderator: andrew

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MikeMillerPE
Junior Member
Posts: 10
Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2018 7:59 pm
Location: Walnut Creek, CA

Hello

Post by MikeMillerPE » Wed Jun 06, 2018 6:00 am

Hi,

I'm new to this forum but I'm excited to be working with QCAD. I'm a civil engineer and hoping to extend the software to provide some custom features through scripts for land surveyors and civil designers. QCAD Professional actually supports z values quite a bit, I have found. I've been using it for a couple of weeks now, and I've written a script that imports a set of x,y,z values and makes 3-dimensional line segments. I then use QCAD's
Draw -> Polyline -> Create from Segments

The result is shown below. It is a polyline composed of 140 points with x,y,z values. I created it with an ECMAscript and an input file using QCAD Professional 3.20.1 (see attached dwg file). The input file is from a QCAD forum user (sorry - used without permission).

I've read on this forum about people seeking extended functionality for Civil/Surveyor needs. I think QCAD can offer a lot, and I'm taking a serious look at helping to make that happen.
airfoil.png
airfoil.png (1.93 KiB) Viewed 7788 times
Attachments
airfoil_polyline.dwg
(18.77 KiB) Downloaded 527 times
Mike Miller, P.E.

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andrew
Site Admin
Posts: 9037
Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2007 6:07 am

Re: Hello

Post by andrew » Wed Jun 06, 2018 9:40 am

Thanks for your introduction and welcome to the QCAD forum.

Yes, 3D coordinates are partially supported in QCAD.

Here are some tips / gotchas:
- You can display Z coordinates in the property editor by enabling Edit > Application Preferences > Widgets > Property Editor > Display Z coordinates
- 3D entities might not be selectable with a mouse click.
- Snapping might snap to a 3D coordinate, producing an entity that is subsequently not selectable by mouse click.

MikeMillerPE
Junior Member
Posts: 10
Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2018 7:59 pm
Location: Walnut Creek, CA

Re: Hello

Post by MikeMillerPE » Fri Jun 08, 2018 8:35 pm

Andrew,

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I've been seeing this behavior. Sometimes the object is not even visible, but is selectable by bounding box.

Reloading the document seems to fix the problem: what bit of magic accomplishes this? It seems to happen even if I set Z to zero.

Regards,
Mike Miller, P.E.

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