Hello from Richmond, VA, USA
Posted: Fri May 26, 2017 12:48 am
About a year ago my fiancée and I were designing our dream home, with the help of an architect. We had what we thought was just a fantastic, so we brought the contractor in on it and he told us why it'd cost something like a hundred grand more than we expected. I talked things over with the architect. I had been sending him sketches I'd do in GIMP and now I converted the PDF files of the plans into something I could edit in GIMP.
I quickly found an issue because it was hard to make sure my changes on the 1st floor would match those on the second. Keeping wall lengths was tough. To his credit, our architect suggested I download the trial version of AutoCAD and use that for a month and he'd show me how to do it. While so many pros can be scared of clients learning how to do what they do, he wasn't worried at all.
Well, there were password issues and I'm on a Mac, so all the AutoCAD tutorials were no help, since they used the Windows interface. Between those two issues, I gave up and searched for a free or open source CAD program. I found LibreCAD, which I've been using for the past year or so. I used it for our house plan changes (the architect sent me .dxf files so I could edit the plans) and I've been using it for other work.
For various reasons, I feel it's time to change. I understand QCAD and LibreCAD have a shared history and I'm checking out QCAD with the idea of switching. So far I like QCAD and am considering paying for a full version license. (My only issue is a need to change mouse/trackpad behavior - still looking for that.)
So I'm sure once I get settled and start using QCAD, I'll be asking a fair amount of questions when I'm working on projects.
I quickly found an issue because it was hard to make sure my changes on the 1st floor would match those on the second. Keeping wall lengths was tough. To his credit, our architect suggested I download the trial version of AutoCAD and use that for a month and he'd show me how to do it. While so many pros can be scared of clients learning how to do what they do, he wasn't worried at all.
Well, there were password issues and I'm on a Mac, so all the AutoCAD tutorials were no help, since they used the Windows interface. Between those two issues, I gave up and searched for a free or open source CAD program. I found LibreCAD, which I've been using for the past year or so. I used it for our house plan changes (the architect sent me .dxf files so I could edit the plans) and I've been using it for other work.
For various reasons, I feel it's time to change. I understand QCAD and LibreCAD have a shared history and I'm checking out QCAD with the idea of switching. So far I like QCAD and am considering paying for a full version license. (My only issue is a need to change mouse/trackpad behavior - still looking for that.)
So I'm sure once I get settled and start using QCAD, I'll be asking a fair amount of questions when I'm working on projects.