Hello everyone, sorry for the delay of a couple days. I only just now found the time to visit the forum again.
In response to Husky:
A less commonly used (but I'd argue one of the most natural) units for measuring angles is often called a "turn", such that 1 turn is a full revolution around a circle. The word "turn" however implies a physical geometrical context however, whereas the concept of any entity revolving in any kind of cyclic process can be more generally referred to as a "cycle" and hence I prefer to refer to the unit that way since it is more universally appropriate and reflects a broader understanding of the generality of the concept.
Cycles (or turns... whatever you want to call them) are exceptionally natural and flexible as units because (1) it is often most natural to think of what proportion of a full turn around a circle you want to travel and (2) any other angular unit can be expressed in cycles with the least possible amount of extraneous factors (such as dividing by other numbers to remove or renormalize any other unit, such as degrees).
For example, 1 degree = 1/360 cycle. Notice that cycles thus directly express exactly what is going on. A degree is a unit that rotates you 1/360 around the circle. Also, the use of a tau based unit causes extra coefficients to drop out of the formulas for measuring the volumes of shapes.
You know how lots of math formulas for volumes of shapes have extra factors in them like 2 and 4 and 8 and so on? That's because the number pi is less natural and when you use tau (a full circle) instead then the tau contains those factors already, which results in a math formula for volumes that is more structurally natural, easier to remember, and evolves when the shape is changed in a slightly more predictable way.
Any other angle unit written in cycles always turns into a very direct representation, because tau (in correspondence with a full cycle) has special mathematical properties that no other choice of angular unit has, resulting in maximally clean and easy to use formulas free of extraneous coefficients and the associated unnecessary busywork they embody.
Cycles are seldom ever available in software, but they are nonetheless one of the best units.
I would perhaps even go so far as to say they are the most natural unit of angles in existence.
The fact that we use a decimal fractional system and that software converts to that automatically is incidental and is not actually an aspect of cycles themselves.
For example, if the software automatically converted to fractions (rational numbers) then the cycles would not have odd-looking decimal expansions and their natural qualities would be more readily apparent. The use of decimal fractions just partially hides the underlying wonderful nature of cycles as a unit, essentially.
Even regardless of that though, it would still be nice to have cycles as a unit, even if it is forced into decimal, because it provides one more useful tool.
Even in decimal form the cycle units are much easier to think about to me than having to convert the more arbitrary (though more popular) units.
That's just my opinion on it though. Nobody is trying to stop anyone else from using their own angle unit preferences, but rather just to support one new unit type.
I just really wish cycles were available too. It would save time sometimes and I've always found it far more intuitive than other units.
Thank you for your time and for reading!
In response to CVH:
Thank you for explaining all that to Husky and for your other comments and time regarding everything I said.
Thank you for the explanation of the surveyor's units too!
I'm not sure what you mean by the cycle units "not telling you anything" though.
Even just the fact that cycles make it instantly apparent exactly what proportion of the circle you've traversed (e.g. 0.3 being 30% around the circle) is immensely helpful and saves a lot of time for people (like me) who haven't spent decades getting used to degrees and can't instantly translate degree calculations in our heads.
Also, large angle measures are only equivalent to smaller ones in the absence of time and movement. The only reason you can treat them as "the same" is because time and motion are not involved, but in some cases they could be.
75266164 degrees of rotation per second is quite different from 244 degrees of rotation per second.
The main value of having cycles available though is simply in the fact that it makes it immediately apparent how far along the circle has been traveled.
Almost everybody in society understands percentages and proportions instantly, but only a small fraction of people have an instantaneous ability to mentally translate degrees and other common angle units into the corresponding actual physical meanings.
In other words, for anyone who understands what cycles are, the overwhelming majority of people will already have almost perfect number sense for their meaning, whereas their number sense for other angle units will take many years to build up to any similar level. Everybody already knows how to think about percentages and proportions.
Anyway though, thanks a bunch for all your time and efforts and for talking with me!
Regardless of whether QCAD implements cycles (or turns), the software is of course wonderful and very exciting for me to have now and the arithmetic trick can at least let me work around the lack of availability of the most natural angle unit (cycles).
PS: I'll be back later to respond to the other suggestion thread I made. I'm eating dinner soon.
