How do I delete?

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amanabove
Newbie Member
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2015 10:52 pm

How do I delete?

Post by amanabove » Thu Mar 26, 2015 12:00 am

Hi. I've only just started using QCAD, and I love it. I've not done any technical drawing since my college days, only I trained using drawing boards and and pencil, so have no real experience of drawing on a computer/using CAD at all. I'm slowing getting the hang of it, and have been starting with some fairly basic 2D 1st Angle Orthographic Projections, etc, but one thing is annoying the hell out of me, which is that I can't for the life of me figure out how to delete a line after I've drawn it, or if I want to modify something.

I've noticed that if I save my work and then shut QCAD down and restart it, when it boots up again it seems to be in just the mode I need to delete something. That is; when I click on a line with my pointer, the default setting after I've rebooted is the two tiny blue squares that appear at the end of each line allowing to click delete and erase that line. However, the moment I click on DRAW (Line From Two Point) and start drawing for a while again (even if it's just one line), I find that if I want to delete something else I cannot find anyway to get those two tiny blue square back at the end of a line no matter what I do, unless of course I just shut down QCAD and reboot it again, and frankly that is driving me nuts!

I've already tried looking through the HELP info, but all that tells me is that I need to "Use Delete", which is no help at all because the Delete Button doesn't even become active until those two little blue boxes appear. I have managed to get those blue boxes up a couple of times without rebooting by using the Focus On Command Line tag, but 99% of the time that doesn't work, and I have no idea why the other 1% of the time it does. Have I maybe just go a glitch in my software?

Any advice you can offer would be much appreciated.

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andrew
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Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2007 6:07 am

Re: How do I delete?

Post by andrew » Thu Mar 26, 2015 8:41 am

What you are asking is how to put QCAD back into 'neutral' mode after starting a tool.

In QCAD, you can start a tool and when you're done working with it, you have to terminate it (QCAD does not know if you still want to draw more lines or not).

To terminate a tool, you have several options:

- Click the right mouse button or press the Escape key on your keyboard.
This goes back one step in the progress of the current tool or terminates the tool.
For example if you are setting the end point of a line, this cancels that step and goes back to setting the start point of a new line.
If you are about to set the start point of a new line and click the right mouse button, the tool is terminated completely.

- Click the mouse pointer button at the top left of the application window or enter 'qq' hit the Q key twice. This terminates all active tools and puts QCAD into 'neutral' mode immediately, so you can select entities, etc.
Screen Shot 2015-03-26 at 08.39.56.png
Screen Shot 2015-03-26 at 08.39.56.png (16.99 KiB) Viewed 4030 times
Since you are new to QCAD and CAD in general, I'd strongly recommend the book / e-book "QCAD - An Introduction to Computer-Aided Design". Such things are explained step by step in great detail in this book which specifically targets beginners.

amanabove
Newbie Member
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2015 10:52 pm

Re: How do I delete?

Post by amanabove » Thu Mar 26, 2015 9:02 am

Thanks very much for your help, Andrew. I will try what you've suggested. I didn't realize about the resetting to "neutral mode" after using a tool, so thanks very much for that tip. And I will indeed buy a copy of that book as soon as possible. I've already fallen in love with QCAD, and thus would love to be able to master it properly.

Best wishes.

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