Crap Nullpointer Exceptions
This is the blog of John Dulaney, a hacker of Fedora, SCAdian, player of Music, blacksmith, sailor, and consumer of Bacon.
Why I use AutoCAD instead of QCAD
Posted by on July 26, 2011
A couple of reasons, really. Number one on the list, though, is that QCAD is useless with my drafting style. Let me preach on it.
In AutoCAD, one can simply hit ‘l’ (or ‘L’, but the extra keystroke is not necessary) on the keyboard to draw a line. No clicking in the text box at the bottom is necessary. This makes drawing lines very fast. In QCAD, one has to click on the text box at the bottom, which is very frustrating. The alternative is, like in AutoCAD, to click on the little icon in the toolbar. But wait, rather than then being able to immediately draw a line, one is presented with choices for a bunch of different lines. When it comes down to it, AutoCAD has the same choices, but they all get their own separate icons. It’s just one click, and boom, lines can be drawn.
But wait, it doesn’t end there! When one is done drawing the line(s), one cannot simply hit <Enter> a couple of times and get out of line drawing. It has to be manually done by the little icons on the left hand side.
Then, we get to splines. I use splines probably more than lines when drawing ships. I’ll trace out the stations of a ship with splines, arrange them three dimensionally along the profile, draw in the water lines (which are also splines) and fair everything out to get a nice, smooth hull. Well, since in QCAD all the points in the splines must snap to existing entities, it makes it difficult to trace things out.
Looking around in QCAD, it isn’t bad feature-wise for a 2D drafting program, and has come a long way since the last time I mucked about with it. However, the user interface does not present itself very well for a professional draftsman (which definition I fit, even if in the current economy that’s not how I make my living). For non-professional home/hobby use, it can be made to work, but I wouldn’t even think about doing some of the the things that I do with AutoCAD with it, even 2D (and considering I do the majority of my drafting three dimensionally…).
You know, it’s odd that a Free Software supporter such as myself would choose the proprietary software over the open source. However, in this instance, the open source program just doesn’t cut it. QCAD is probably about twelve years or so behind AutoCAD in terms of development. Sounds like I’ve just given myself a new project…
John Dulaney
Have you heard of LibreCAD? It’s a fork of QCad, maybe you can give them some feedback for improving the program.
QCAD = $0
AutoCAD = $thousand of dollars
and is very probably you use pirate software….so… don’t blame QCAD and go use windows. Maybe a BSOD will drop you 4 hours of job jeje
LibreCAD looks like it has a better UI than QCAD.
And yes, I purchased AutoCAD; I know how much it costs.
It’s also what I used at work (it’s basically industry standard, and, in this case, for a reason).
Well, on trying LibreCAD, everything wrong with QCAD’s UI is also wrong with LibreCAD’s UI.
Using paid software by an open source evangelist is no problem. Specially when the open source software that covers the functionality lacks usability, of course open source let’s you modify the source code to add the features/functionality you need, and then everyone gets the benefit (of course, not everyone that uses open source has the capabilities to add/change features/functionality). One must earn a living and use the correct tools for it, not because one has to use a paid tool one must completely switch close source software (i.e. MS Windows).
I am fortunate enough to be able to do all my work with open source software. But there is enough space for both open and close source to exist.
QCAD (at least Pro for a few bucks) has two letter shortcuts for every command. Forget the command line for launching commands. Type L, then I (NOT into the command line) and start drawing lines. You can’t get more efficient than that.
Get out of line drawing? Hit Escape or the right mouse button. Not much slower then Enter, is it?
No snap for splines (or anything)? Snap – Free (or type S, F).
Funny, I don’t use AutoCAD because it slows me down with all this reading and typing commands
I don’t do any reading and typing commands, it’s all one or two letter shortcuts.