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It would be nice to be able to adjust the zoom factor so that the scale on the screen matches a ruler which I lay on the screen.

Thanks!

When dimensioning my drawings I always want the dimensions to be on the dimensions layer.
When adding text I want the text to be on the text layer.
When drawing an infinite line it is always a construction line, therefore I want it to be on the construction line layer.
When drawing a line segment it almost always is on my outline layer.

So I propose a new option to bind certain actions to certain layers.
Whenever those actions are selected the layer should automatically be switched.

I can imagine this being implemented in the General→Tool Settings menu, where the short cuts are defined.

Being able to fill an area with a bitmap would be a nice addition to the already impressive feature list of QCAD.

It would be a nice feature to be able to define your own toolbar.

See: http://www.qcad.org/rsforum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=2393

Would it be possible to add a feature which turns selected text into solid fill hatched polylines?

That would make it possible to migrate the drawing from one computer system to another without having to worry whether the used font is installed on both systems, like when sending a drawing to a manufacturer for laser engraving.

Right now I can do it by hand, letter by letter, and that is a rather labour-intensive task.

My system: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 650 @ 3.20GHz and 8 GB of RAM and NVIDIA GT218 (GeForce 210)

For a normal drawing displaying it in all detail is a good thing and the performance of my quad-core system is more than adequate.

But I discovered (or rather experienced) that when putting a large collection of individual drawings of gears onto one big sheet (960 mm x 600 mm - preparation for laser cutting), the performance was so bad that I had to wait several seconds (>10 sec) for each step in the process of arranging all the parts on the layer.

Request: It would be a big help and performance booster if you could disable the detailed view of each part/layer and only draw a rectangle to visualize the outline of the part.

Please take this in consideration. Attached you find an example of how that could look like. (Actually when pasting a drawing from the clipboard you already do that.)

I guess this is a case of wording and wrong expectations.

The polyline tool “Delete Segments between two nodes” removes nodes, but not segments as the title and the icon suggests.

I propose to rename it to “Delete Nodes between two nodes”.

A tool which actually removes line segments from a polyline, leaving gaps, could indeed be useful to some users.

I think of a straight polyline with several segments. Then I remove some segments. I end up with a polyline with “holes” in it. Now I could stretch that polyline and all the remaining segments and holes stretch proportionally. Could be handy some times.

Sometimes you end up with a straight line which is broken/split into several parts. It would be great to have a tool to merge/combine these segments into one.

That would be the opposite/complementary tool to the “Split Entities” tool.

To improve useability/efficiency I would like to propose the following changes/additions to the layer list:

1) Combining the show and hide button into one button.

Clicking once will hide all layers, clicking again will show them all again.

2) A “lock/unlock” button.

Clicking once will lock all layers, clicking again will unlock them all again.

Regarding the icons I suggest that instead of show both the black and grey version of the eye/lock, you could switch between them depending on the state the switch-button is in. Also the mouse-over-text could/should change with the state.

My task: To hatch an area.

Right now, if I want to fill an area with a hatch pattern, I have to select all the enclosing objects (lines, arcs) and then I can select the hatch tool. That can be under some circumstances a tedious task.
To illustrate this, I created a simple example (see Attachment 1: Hatching.png).

Step 1: Create a rectangle.
Step 2: Draw four vertical lines.
Step 3: Select the four lines surrounding the first area. –> Problem! The horizontal lines are too long.
Step 4: Divide the long horizontal lines of the rectangle where the vertical lines touch. Now the lines surrounding the three areas can be selected.
Step 5: Hatch the selection. Done.

Just for fun try recreating my second example (see Attachment 2: Hatching2.png)

Therefore I would like to suggest a far more simple approach.

Step 1: Select the Hatch Tool.
Step 2: Click inside the area you would like to be hatched. Done.

Of course that would mean that the hatch style is already pre-defined and can be changed later, if needed.

In this way productivity can be increased by ... [fill in you own estimate] ... times.

Example 2 would need only 13 clicks to hatch all the areas (including the hatch tool button).