New User LibreCad vs Autosketch, Just an FYI

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New User LibreCad vs Autosketch, Just an FYI

szempruw
Version: 2.1.3
Compiler: GNU GCC 4.9.1
Compiled on: Sep 23 2016
Qt Version: 5.4.1
Boost Version: 1.60.0

FYI guys, LibreCad wins any comparison IMHO. I just started working with it. All of about 10 days of experience with it. I taught myself Autosketch many years ago. I tried recently TurboCad and the style was way too much and difficult. Not intuitive. I like the intuitive style of Autosketch and I now found LibreCad to be of the same style. I make/made hobby drawings of RC model plane stuff and as I grew in experience, it drew well. So overall I found it better than Autosketch v10.

A few quirks were found, but mostly if you watch what you are doing, it works well. Here are some items recommended for improvement. If desired, I'll document them rigorously and put them into a bucket of "minor" changes if that is desired. (I used to do UI software testing for a living).

1. The drawing preferences seemed to change at times opening up a new session. Can't swear to it though.
2. Printing drove me nuts till I realized that the default was "Print to File" and I unchecked it each time I wanted to print. It didn't stay unchecked for the session. I thought it was broken. On small parts, I prefer 1:1 printing. I could get it to print 1:1 on Letter paper, but no matter how hard I tried to draw a border within the letter size, it wouldn't print 1:1 with the border. Maybe something between Printer settings and LibreCad setting is off a little. Something's wrong with the automatic centering/printing adjustments. I could not get a PDF file to print 1:1. It always adjusted to a smaller scale. I print to a Dell Lazer printer. Overall it works, but not perfect. I can live with it. I have an ARCHE size to print. I hope it prints well. The default line size of 0mm caused a problem till I changed all to print ISO .13mm. Again, you just have to watch all these details to make it work correctly. Perhaps a better assignment of defaults is needed to help novice users.
3. I kept changing "Attributes" and commented before that it would be more user friendly to show what is currently assigned. Then see affirmatively what you have and then make the changes.  The "Properties" window when selected didn't open up anywhere. I assume it is a pop up window. I just don't know.
4. When setting a drawing size and scales, maybe the zoom level should default and change to match. It drove me nuts for awhile switching from mm to inches, only to realize my things drawn were really correct sizes! If I had a giant LCD display, maybe I would have caught that sooner. Again, just a User Friendly issue. It works as is; you just have to know how to drive the car before you go on the road and it takes a little time. Maybe some good tutorials on the importance of Drawing Preferences based on scale size and its visual / printing impact would save some new user complaints.  

Over all, my experience as a new user was good. My compliments to all who worked on this to get this 2D CAD program as sophisticated as it already is. I'm going in the direction of wanting to make some 3D drawings for printing small parts and I hope to find a good compliment and compatible 3D program like the 2D LibreCad.

Thank you all for your hard work on this!