Autocad "Feel"

Originator: NO

This is nice in principle, but can you please be more specific? What
Autocad-like changes in behavior you propose? I can't promise we will
implement them all but I would be interested to hear your reasoning.

Originator: YES

Thank you for your anwer, it was fast and warming. I foretell that you are
going to succeed in this collaborative software effort.

Here I go:

The most useful thing Autocad has is the reference method for locating
elements in a drawing: The Osnap (Object Snap) Method.

With it you can draw a line from the center of a circle to the
intersection of two lines, or perpendicular to a line, or to the midpoint,
or... And the tool is very handful and also you can draw in "Autosnap" mode
(easily switching with F3), and the options are suggested to you when you
pass the arrow over the objects.

After it the most used tools are:

- Trim (To remove part of the lines thar are cut by other)

- Extend (To extend an object to a boundary)

- Stretch: Is like Extend, but you select a bunch of lines with a box, and
the lines cutting the box are strechted, and the fully contained are moved,
and the rest unaffected.

- The copy properties tool.

- The offset tool, that copies a line (or object,or group af lines) to a
measured distance (this tool is by far much more used then absolute or
relative coordinates.)

- Switching to Orto mode with F8.

- The fillet tool It basically extends two lines until they meet, and
optionally, inserts a curve where the lines join.

Ok, thats it! The rest are less used and Inkskape does it better.

My point is that if you can "simulate" the feel of Autocad, 50 % of the
work can be done with Inkscape, but also that combining freehand with
technical sketching, it could "blend" the two worlds (the tecnicians could
be more artists and vice versa) A new kind of technical drawings could be
produced.

Also, if we had dxf conversion, it would sure save 80% of reboots to
windows to change a simple drawing in Autocad, because we would do directly
the work in Inkscape.

Let me know if I can help some way.

Originator: NO

I'd agree that Inkscape makes it hard to achieve exact results for
technical drawing. Indeed producing SVG that is usable for scripting is in
many ways a similar problem.

However, I think that making significant concessions in this direction
would make the interface harder to use, and slow development of Inkscape as
an artist's tool.

Additionally, the SVG document model doesn't really map well onto the
AutoCAD document model. AutoCAD represents drawings with groups of
zero-width line segments and arcs. SVG can't represent dimensionless lines,
and it operates primarily with polylines consisting of a continuous
sequence of straight line segments, beziers and arcs.

While it may be possible to write a CAD application which uses SVG as its
native format, I think it would have to evolve very differently to the
direction Inkscape takes.

Couldn't you use something like QCad to avoid rebooting into Windows?

Originator: YES

I'm trying these days qemu, to get Autocad.

Let me insist a little more, and won't bother you again!

I think artists would benefit of having as many tools as possible, and
exact referencing would help a lot.

And one of the cad's difficulties is not having widths, it's ok if you
have to plot the same drawing involving different layers and scales, but
for many drawings (if you are designing a chair, or an electric schema),
you dont change the widths, so the system will benefit from lines with
their own width.

I insist in the autosnap method of Autocad, is easy, consistent, doesn't
get in the way (you switch it on/off with F3) and gives you a lot of power.
The rest can be worked around.

Bye and thank you!

Originator: NO

Hi. Made a screen cast of a cad design program in action.
http://www.youtube.com/maartenm79. Always wondered how artist made logo's
and stuff, probably by eye. Jikes.