Can't Execute Critical Functions
Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 2:42 am
Hi,
First, let me say that I am having some significant problems interacting with this forum. Several times, I have been typing and all of a sudden I am back at the login screen, and my post has evaporated. If you get several chopped up versions of this, that may be why. Anyway, on to the topic.
My son put me onto QCAD, and I installed it a couple of months ago. I am still learning it, but in general, I am pretty impressed with it. It is a little irritating that some functions behave differently during the trial period after launching the program than they do ten minutes or so into the session after that dialog pops up saying that the trial period has expired. I'm not bothered by the functions that are not there until one purchases the product, but by the ones that behave differently in the two cases. This means that until the purchase is made, one has to be aware of which state they are in, or they (at least I) make mistakes by expecting one thing and getting something else. But never mind that for now. That all goes away (I presume) once the full version is purchased.
I must say that the program is quite comprehensive for the small license fee that is asked. The reason that I have not jumped at that and spent the modest charge and made the purchase yet, despite liking the program, is that I and my son have both been completely unsuccessful at executing two critical functions, and without them, the program is nearly worthless to me. I have been able to make nothing happen regarding line weights, and I have not been able to print at all using any of the options provided. It is my understanding that those tools are supposed to work fully during the trial, but my experimenting says that they don't do anything in either trial or the limited version. Without line weights and printing, I will need to find something else.
The line weight thing puzzles me quite a bit. Everything else for the line attributes works fine. I can create any color, choose from a variety of styles, put them on whatever level, tie the attributes to the level or not, and so forth. But nothing I have tried with the weight seems to have any effect. I need to toggle on "screen-based linesypes" for styles to display properly, but that has no impact on line weights. I have found nothing in the help or on the forum that deals with this issue, so I am pretty well stumped.
Similarly, the print functions have been completely unresponsive to us. I have been trying to experiment with different possibilities to figure out how I get a hard copy of a drawing, and the only route that I have found is a workaround using the bitmap export, which is cumbersome and produces a lower quality product than I hope the printout does. Once again, I have found no relevant topics in help or on the forum. The bitmap export contains all one uniform line weight, regardless of the line weights selected, so it does not solve that issue.
Then today, I attempted to do some further testing and experimenting, and I had a frustrating discovery. The splash screen says that I have launched the program 100 times, and that trial mode is no longer available to me. It would have been nice to know that before it actually happened. At this point, I cannot even recreate the problems that I was having so that I can ask appropriate questions. I am fully reliant on my memory to describe the maladies. Had I known that I was nearing the end of the trial, I would have taken more decisive action and not experimented on my own so long. But such is the case now.
Can you salvage me as a potential customer at this point?
First, let me say that I am having some significant problems interacting with this forum. Several times, I have been typing and all of a sudden I am back at the login screen, and my post has evaporated. If you get several chopped up versions of this, that may be why. Anyway, on to the topic.
My son put me onto QCAD, and I installed it a couple of months ago. I am still learning it, but in general, I am pretty impressed with it. It is a little irritating that some functions behave differently during the trial period after launching the program than they do ten minutes or so into the session after that dialog pops up saying that the trial period has expired. I'm not bothered by the functions that are not there until one purchases the product, but by the ones that behave differently in the two cases. This means that until the purchase is made, one has to be aware of which state they are in, or they (at least I) make mistakes by expecting one thing and getting something else. But never mind that for now. That all goes away (I presume) once the full version is purchased.
I must say that the program is quite comprehensive for the small license fee that is asked. The reason that I have not jumped at that and spent the modest charge and made the purchase yet, despite liking the program, is that I and my son have both been completely unsuccessful at executing two critical functions, and without them, the program is nearly worthless to me. I have been able to make nothing happen regarding line weights, and I have not been able to print at all using any of the options provided. It is my understanding that those tools are supposed to work fully during the trial, but my experimenting says that they don't do anything in either trial or the limited version. Without line weights and printing, I will need to find something else.
The line weight thing puzzles me quite a bit. Everything else for the line attributes works fine. I can create any color, choose from a variety of styles, put them on whatever level, tie the attributes to the level or not, and so forth. But nothing I have tried with the weight seems to have any effect. I need to toggle on "screen-based linesypes" for styles to display properly, but that has no impact on line weights. I have found nothing in the help or on the forum that deals with this issue, so I am pretty well stumped.
Similarly, the print functions have been completely unresponsive to us. I have been trying to experiment with different possibilities to figure out how I get a hard copy of a drawing, and the only route that I have found is a workaround using the bitmap export, which is cumbersome and produces a lower quality product than I hope the printout does. Once again, I have found no relevant topics in help or on the forum. The bitmap export contains all one uniform line weight, regardless of the line weights selected, so it does not solve that issue.
Then today, I attempted to do some further testing and experimenting, and I had a frustrating discovery. The splash screen says that I have launched the program 100 times, and that trial mode is no longer available to me. It would have been nice to know that before it actually happened. At this point, I cannot even recreate the problems that I was having so that I can ask appropriate questions. I am fully reliant on my memory to describe the maladies. Had I known that I was nearing the end of the trial, I would have taken more decisive action and not experimented on my own so long. But such is the case now.
Can you salvage me as a potential customer at this point?