How to make pipes ?

[lalebarde]

Hi all,
I am new to QCAD. I need to make stair hand rails, what means pipes in CAD. I can make a spline or a poly line and paste along a circle, then "by hand" draw a polyline snaped to entities on each side, clicking from a little distance to be sure to snap to the envelop, like this :

make_pipes.png (18.44 KiB) Viewed 4444 times

I can also use a thick line with a soft color, but the QCAD limit is 2 mm.
But it is a lot of effort when it could be made simplier. What is the best way with QCAD to perform this please ?

[andrew]

If your curve at the center is a polyline, you can use Modify > Offset with Distance.

If your curve consists of loose line and arc segments, you can convert them to a polyline first (Draw > Polyline > Create from Segments).
If your curve is a spline, use Modify > Explode to convert it to a polyline.

[lalebarde]

Your proposition leads to non constant sections, or I misfit something ?

make_bad_pipes.png (15.27 KiB) Viewed 4440 times

[andrew]

This does not look like the result of Modify > Offset with Distance. Did you use Move/Copy instead? That's a very different tool with a very different result, obviously...

[lalebarde]

Sorry Andrew and thank you very much, it works well.

make_pipes.png (14.57 KiB) Viewed 4440 times