On 29.04.17 08:43, Stephen GEORGE via luv-main wrote: > I have not used LibreCAD, .. but a number of years ago I used QCAD, ... > LibreCAD is a fork of community edition of QCAD, although as I understand > both products have moved on from that position, so now unsure how they > differ. > However when I used QCAD a number of years ago, I found it was quite capable > to draw my 2D floor plans and 2d elevations, and I could enter the lines > position, length angle all from the keyboard. > To start with there was a bit of a learning curve, understanding how to > switch into command mode, benefits of working in layers, and there is a > million icons around the page that do useful stuff, but till you learn what > they do they remain a mystery. You could invest a lot of time learning all > the ins and outs. > But the good news is to lay down a line where you want it and to the length > you want it is simple enough.
Thank you for taking an interest, Stephen. I've spent a lot of time becoming fluent in Eagle, for schematic capture and PCB layouts. It's the tedium and frustration of repeating that for a one-off 2D CAD job which doesn't quite compute. It may seem loony, but I've just spent several hours teaching myself enough postscript to draw a stud, a stud_bay, and a stud_wall, taking a parameter for length. A few more minutes of effort gave a double_stud_wall, with offset studs for greater insulation. Placing four of them, with rotation, makes a room. A few more hours should see windows & doors added. Also thrown in is automated counting of the studs used - i.e. the beginnings of framing estimation. Importantly, I'm stimulated rather than being frazzled by an uncooperative and inscrutable GUI. > Most floor plans need to add dimensions, the advantage with a cad program is > how easy that is (possibly on another layer so you can hide them when you > dont want them) Falling asleep last night, I considered picking up the wall length parameter, for auto-annotation of the dimension. But I first have to bone up on postscript conditionals, because some walls shouldn't be dimensioned. A separate dimension primitive is elementary. > So I just installed LibreCAD and the interface seems similar to what I used > previously, and I was able to quickly lay down a couple of lines with the > keyboard using commands I learnt in QCAD. > > I seem to remember something quirky in QCAD in having to set page size > before starting my drawing, otherwise it might not fit on my print out, .. > I cant quite remember what that was, .. I dont know how LibreCAD handles > that but it might pay for you to experiment with laying down a couple of > dimensions to size and then see if you can get the output you want before > putting a lot of effort into drawing details. There is a little bit more display iteration with postscript, particularly while developing primitives. Hopefully I don't meet some horrible gotcha further down the track, but it is neat game to play so far, and the results are very nice. Erik _______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list [email protected] https://lists.luv.asn.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luv-main
