Newbie on modification and selection

I'm a newbie to both LibreCAD and CAD in general.  I consider myself a power user on most general purpose office software - in Windows.  I am running Windows 7 64 bit and LibreCAD 2.0.0beta1.

I've been able to create a few drawings.  The 'LibreCAD version 2, users Manual/Guide - by Bob Woltz' has been invaluable.  It does seem to exist on more than one url address.  Difficult to determine what might be the latest version.  Would be nice if all of the diagrams showed up.  I can only see diagrams down to the L-Block.  

One thing seems odd about the way the program works.  (Please do not take this as criticism.  Simply an observation that, I think, needs explaining to the newbie.)  On most programs you select an item and then choose the operation to apply.  LC seems to have you select the operation and then select the item and then cause the operation to execute.  Different but valid, if it is consistent.

My problem with this is that it only seems to work when you individually select each entity in what you want to affect.  I would like to be able to drag and select a whole group of entities, but that does not seem to work.  For instance, I did all my initial drawings with 0 thickness lines selected. Looks fine on screen, doesn't print all that well.  I would like to Modify, Select All, Properties and then choose a line thickness and set them all.  Properties box never opens.  

Am I missing some essential step?


-----Paul-----

Hi Paul

try this:

1. Select entities.

2.Go to Modify > Attributes > click enter key.

3. In attributes dialog > Change layer state (which will change all the selected entities to the chosen 'layers' attributes.) Or choose to select Color, Line width or line type.

press OK

Should be job done :)

Thank you.  So the key is to select Attributes rather than Properties.  Again, something that I think needs to be explained in newbie docs.  May be common to CAD programs but is unusual to me.

-----Paul-----

pwright2 wrote

Thank you.  So the key is to select Attributes rather than Properties.  Again, something that I think needs to be explained in newbie docs.

Yes you are quite right here, we have bits and pieces of documentation about in various formats but  ideally it all needs collating/editing and adding to the wiki.The problem is that the wiki is not particularly that 'user' friendly and therefore is taking rather more time to sort out.
There have also been further suggestions that using Google docs/drive may be a way forward, so as you can see it all still needs fine tuning, personally I think we need a common easy frame work that we can all add to and easily be edited without too  much difficulty.

 

pwright2 wrote

 May be common to CAD programs but is unusual to me.

You will find that most/all 2D cad programs will use similar terminology and possibly similar functions - however they do definitely all differ. LibreCAD was forked from the 'open' source QCAD community edition and so still retains most of this particular programs style. But in time I'm sure LibreCAD will evolve and develop it's own style and change to become more intuitive - but hey  - it's free and open source, the more new developers get involved the more it will develop, so spread the word.

Regards...