Page 1 of 1

QCad 3 feedback

Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2011 12:24 pm
by VOK
Re: Loss of features from QCad 2 to Q Cad 3

The command box is no longer able to be undocked and relocated to the side of the work area, or alternatively another screen

The status bar is now permanent, I for one would be just as happy if there were no status bar at all, I never read it (perhaps I do sometimes check how many entities are selected, not very often tho)

QCad 3 appears to have drawing tabs at the top of the screen (limited value)

The rulers cannot be disabled

While I’m at it, what benefit is there in the slider bars, (uses up screen space)

These items combine to leave my 24” ($400.00) screen with an effective viewing
area of the drawing equal to a 15.3” screen. I don’t want to be trying to squint my way along with that

The grid cannot be turned off or adjusted. I don’t actually understand this obsession cad programmers have with a grid; I have over 25 years of professional cad experience, and cannot recall any professional or amateur drafts person who actually uses a grid. Whenever we assess a new cad, the first discussion is usually “How do we disable the grid?”

There appears to be no library toolbar (at least not in the same place it was in 2) surely the intention is not to load library items directly as drawing files or something

The block list toolbar seems to have lost the ability to “hide” and “show”. This feature was very useful, and was a personal favorite. It is not present in many other major packages. Well certainly not as accessible as QCad 2

Some of the drop down menus have very poor contrast and do not seem do display at all until they are selected (e.g. Layer data)

The Modify/Attributes feature is missing from the menu; this was a very effective tool when loading a drawing from a foreign source like a translated PDF or an imperfect or old .dwg

There is no PDF export option. This is a critical one; no PDF and I can’t communicate with a client

I have set up my system to operate on 2 screens, the drawing on one side and the tool bars on the other side, at this point it seems that the reset toolbar occasionally becomes locked on, and is only removed by a computer restart.
QCad 3 is very slow to load on my system and seems to run and work slower, I have just compared drawing 10,000 vectors on QCad 2, and QCad 3. QCad2 is blindingly fast, loads in less than 1.0 seconds and manipulates the 10,000 vectors with only the slightest lag. QCad3 loads in about 12.0 seconds and there is a 15.0second lag selecting and operating on the10,000 vectors
Others are reporting 3 is faster than 2, so I must have some setting wrong in my system

Best new features are:
Autosave
Select polygon
User define shortcuts


My system is Win7 6.1 Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.67GHz 6.00GB Ram

VOK

Re: QCad 3 feedback

Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2011 8:02 pm
by andrew
Thanks for the valuable feedback.

Please note that QCAD 3 is a beta version (expected to be not fully functional / complete) which was released primarily to get feedback from early adopters.
VOK wrote:The command box is no longer able to be undocked and relocated to the side of the work area, or alternatively another screen
Feature request exists / implemented in current development version:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... ask_id=201
VOK wrote:The status bar is now permanent, I for one would be just as happy if there were no status bar at all, I never read it (perhaps I do sometimes check how many entities are selected, not very often tho)
Feature request exists / implemented in current development version:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... ask_id=197
VOK wrote:The rulers cannot be disabled
Please try:
Application preferences - Graphics View - Show Rulers

If it does not work as expected, please file a bug report:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... &project=1
VOK wrote:While I’m at it, what benefit is there in the slider bars, (uses up screen space)
Feature request added:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... ask_id=230
VOK wrote:The grid cannot be turned off or adjusted. I don’t actually understand this obsession cad programmers have with a grid; I have over 25 years of professional cad experience, and cannot recall any professional or amateur drafts person who actually uses a grid. Whenever we assess a new cad, the first discussion is usually “How do we disable the grid?”
I guess what this would boil down to for your use case is an option to disable the grid for auto snapping and disable the grid display. If you don't want to use 'snap to grid', don't use it. This is certainly a matter or preference.

Feature requests are here:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... ask_id=229
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... ask_id=231
VOK wrote:There appears to be no library toolbar (at least not in the same place it was in 2) surely the intention is not to load library items directly as drawing files or something
Related to bug report:
FS#219 - Library browser not in View - Toolbars menu

Workaround: Right-click on a tool bar and tick 'Library Browser'.
VOK wrote:The block list toolbar seems to have lost the ability to “hide” and “show”. This feature was very useful, and was a personal favorite. It is not present in many other major packages. Well certainly not as accessible as QCad 2
Feature request:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... ask_id=232
VOK wrote:Some of the drop down menus have very poor contrast and do not seem do display at all until they are selected (e.g. Layer data)
Please explain in more detail. Especially what is the 'Layer data' drop down menu? Is that the layer menu in the menu bar of the application? Or the dialog to add a layer? Maybe it's best to file a detailed bug report:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... &project=1
VOK wrote:The Modify/Attributes feature is missing from the menu; this was a very effective tool when loading a drawing from a foreign source like a translated PDF or an imperfect or old .dwg
This is replaced by extended functionality of the property editor. If that does not replace the Modify Attributes tool for you, please explain why.
VOK wrote:There is no PDF export option. This is a critical one; no PDF and I can’t communicate with a client
You can find the PDF export option only in the print preview (PDF icon in toolbar). The reasoning here is that people tend to open a drawing, export to PDF and get an empty page or a single line simply because they did not switch to print preview first and adjust the drawing scale, paper size, offset, etc. So switching to the print preview is actually mandatory for a meaningful PDF export or print.
VOK wrote:I have set up my system to operate on 2 screens, the drawing on one side and the tool bars on the other side, at this point it seems that the reset toolbar occasionally becomes locked on, and is only removed by a computer restart.
Maybe also an item for the bug tracker, although we probably will not be able to reproduce / fix this.
VOK wrote:QCad 3 is very slow to load on my system and seems to run and work slower, I have just compared drawing 10,000 vectors on QCad 2, and QCad 3. QCad2 is blindingly fast, loads in less than 1.0 seconds and manipulates the 10,000 vectors with only the slightest lag. QCad3 loads in about 12.0 seconds and there is a 15.0second lag selecting and operating on the10,000 vectors
Others are reporting 3 is faster than 2, so I must have some setting wrong in my system
More likely your drawings are different. We are working on improving performance especially for blocks. The drawing display should definitely be faster or just as fast in QCAD 3 as QCAD 2. Selecting and manipulating should also be significantly faster, due to our new spatial index. We will check that again:

http://www.ribbonsoft.com/bugtracker/in ... ask_id=233

Starting will become somewhat faster as we are planning to make the library browser a separate application that can be launched from QCAD. It creates significant overhead at the moment to update the search index, preview icons, etc.

Having said that, QCAD 3 will probably always start a bit slower than QCAD 2 since it simply has to load more shared libraries for the much improved DXF and added DWG support.

Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2011 11:06 am
by tyke
The dxf import is much better, at least on the drawings I've tried from client.
Any ideas on when a working version will be available?

autofit

Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2011 11:26 am
by tyke
What happened to the autofit to page on printing. The single page icon doesn't seem to do it,

Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2011 11:32 am
by andrew
Autofit has been postponed to a post 3.0 version of QCAD.

The single page button switched back from multiple pages to a single page.

Please start a separate thread in this forum for different unrelated questions. Thanks.

Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2011 12:34 pm
by andrew
tyke wrote:Any ideas on when a working version will be available?
QCAD 3 Beta 3 is likely the last beta release before the final 3.0 release. That's unless we would still discover any serious bugs in Beta 3 (which we don't expect).