New User Suggestions

I am new to LibreCAD but very impressed so far. It is very close to what I am looking for but has a couple of basic problems that are preventing me from actually using it.

Do the developers want to hear about these kinds of issues? How would you like the suggestions to be submitted? I don’t want to be annoying but I think I can actually help with the design.

Could you tell here about issues, maybe someone could help?

I'm and many others have used LibreCAD for quite a while without any majos hickups.

What version of LibreCAD did you try?

And at the head of the front page are links to documentation.

Quite often the difficulties derive from that user has got so used to some other commercial CAD, and it is hard to 'unlearn' habits.

First, let me say that I really like LibreCAD. I hope the developers will resist the suggestions to add a lot of features like AutoCAD. What I like about LibreCAD is that it has just the features I want without a lot of distractions.

I have had a few hiccups that might be improved or documented better and I may come back to those, but I was able to work around them.

My main concern is with the way scale is handled with line weights and types . In my opinion, a tool like LibreCAD should support a work process that includes printing (plotting) output. In today's work world that is almost always to a .PDF file since that is the way we exchange “plots” and it makes it much easier to utilize a plotting service without getting into printer settings.

To this end, I want to see the line weights and types (dashes etc.) as I am working in the same way as they will be plotted. The color seems to work fine. I have two problems with the lines:
- First, the line weights do not seem to show properly in the document window. (They display correctly in the Plot Preview.)
- Second, the dashes (or similar elements) in the line types shrink and grow, based on the zoom level, in both the document and plot preview windows.

With both the line weight and the line type I want them to adjust for the scale and then stay constant. That way I can compose the drawing as I want to see it while I am working. I care a lot about how closely spaced lines with line weight are, and how the dashes appear. I can always zoom in or out if I need to see more detail. Since the scale is defined in the document, it should be possible to set these features properly.
As a workaround, I can see the line weights in the Plot Preview window but the dash spacing isn’t really defined until I do a test plot.

Thank you for your attention and I hope this has been useful to you and others.

Line weight is shown right in drawing mode at scale 1:1. At a drawing intended for 1:100 they seem very thin, but they are in fact the same, for example 0.5 mm in real life on a 10 m long wall. Print Preview shows them as 0.5 mm on an A4 sheet at 1:100.

Linetype is always rendered with the same dash spaces on paper or pdf, regardless of scale.
You can print out this sheet, so you will know how they will look on paper: linetypes.pdf

These are known limitations in LibreCAD, which also have been discussed before. There are many things to be improved, the problem is there is no one to do it.

Maybe when LibreCAD 3 appears it will address these deficiencies.